Running Head: NATURE OF THE PRIMARY EMOTIONAL SYSTEMS Affective Neuronal Darwinism: The Nature of the Primary Emotional Systems

Higher brain functions are sculpted on the basis of the mainly “hard-wired” primary emotions through the process of Affective Neural Darwinism. Here we make a tentative new proposal as to the nature of the primary emotional systems, based largely on a combination of the work of Panksepp on affective neuroscience, the work of Stevens, Price and others on evolutionary psychiatry, and data on animal behaviour and neuroanatomy. In particular we suggest that in addition to the systems identified by Panksepp, there is substantial evidence for a hard-wired affective system dealing with power, rank, dominance and subordination which instantiates competitive behaviour and guarding of mates and other resources and which is the evolutionary source of self-esteem in humans. In a previous paper we also proposed an emotional organising programme instantiating disgust reactions which originally functioned in ancient vertebrates to protect against infection and toxins. ___________________________________________________________