Decades of animal research point to conserved subcortical circuits that generate raw affect, which the cortex then appraises and modulates into emotion. The DSM, built for reliability and checklists, says little about this, and fitting big feelings into the nearest category can leave the real problem untouched. The model helps explain why strong arousal crowds out cortical control, why new late-life anxiety can signal a receding cortex, and why therapy works by growing new connections.
What it is
Sixty years of bench neuroscience, in every mammal studied, points to the same thing: conserved, homologous circuits are responsible for affective impulses.
“there's 60 years of bench neuroscience in multiple mammals, and every animal that's been studied, it all points to the same thing, that there are conserved homologous circuits responsible for affective impulses”
1:17Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode Affect is the raw subcortical valence and arousal the midbrain sends up when these circuits fire. Emotion is what the rest of the brain makes of it.
“the affect would be that raw subcortical valence, the arousal that's being sent up. So that animal part of the brain, the midbrain, it's sending up, when these circuits are activated, they're sending up their information, their arousal”
28:34Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode There are four positive-valence systems (seeking, lust, care and play) and three negative-valence systems that animals have a strong aversion to.
“So that's the seeking system, the loss system, the care system, and the play system. And then there's three negative valence systems. And so these are systems that animals have aversion to. They have very, very negative valence”
27:40Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode Stimulating the cortex in awake surgery can make an arm move, but it never produces an emotional response.
“Cortical stimulation, you can make people's arms move, you know, do all these things. What you don't get ever is any kind of emotional response. Okay. That's just, that's been borne out in cortical stimulation for awake surgeries”
49:45Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode The more activated the subcortical systems are during big feelings and strong arousal, the less activated the cortical systems are, and the reverse.
“If someone is having big, big feels and really strong affective arousals, the emotional regulation literature is pretty clear. More activated the subcortical systems are, and the cortical systems are less activated, and the inverse is true”
7:51Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode Humans have a great deal of capacity for reappraisal and modulation, and for acting on values held in the cortex rather than on ancient animal-brain impulses.
“we have so much capacity for reappraisal, modulating, acting on cortically represented values rather than these ancient animal brain impulses”
19:52Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode
How we use it
One way to describe each affect is by four amounts: its level at rest, how strong it gets when activated, how long it takes to burn off, and how much stimulus sets it off.
“there's an amount that when you're just chilling, there's an amount when it gets activated. There's an amount of time that it takes to burn off. And then how much stimulus do you need to kind of get set off”
44:35Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026
What it gets confused with
In an older patient with new depression or anxiety, the subcortical systems may be firing just as they always have (panic, grief, separation, rage, fear), but as the cortex recedes and loses neurons, the person can no longer modulate that affect properly.
“your subcortical systems are firing just fine. So the panic, grief, the separation, the stress signal, the rage, fear, all those things that have been firing across your life and you've got the brain to handle it, it's As your cortex is receding and losing neurons, you are no longer modulating that affect properly”
14:51Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode
Talking to patients
Draw the brain and move up it: the midbrain is where affect, ancestral inheritance and emotional experience come from, and information from lower down takes primacy as it moves up.
“I'll just move on up. This is the midbrain. This is where affect comes from. These are where your ancestral inheritance, these are where your emotional experiences, this is where this information comes up. And as we move up, there's a primacy on the influence of information”
10:31Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode Extinction is growing new inhibitory connections. We do not delete old memories; we grow new ones, so therapy is all about growth.
“Extinction really is growing new inhibitory connections. So it's all about growth. We don't delete old memories. We don't delete things. You just grow new ones”
36:49Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode
Pitfalls and myths
Many patients get a label and a pill that kind of works: call it generalized anxiety disorder, give sertraline, and both sides put on blinders and pretend it is a categorical thing while the real problem goes undiscussed.
“There's so many patients where it's like, yeah, you're having problems. Let's call it generalized anxiety disorder, give you Zoloft. It kind of works. We're not really talking about the real problem, but we can both put our blinders on and pretend that it's just this categorical thing”
5:39Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026 When DSM-III came out, the push was to get things down to reliability and checklists, and emotions were felt to be beyond measuring.
“When DSM-3 was coming out in the 80s, there was a lot of concern. There were some studies showing psychopaths. And so, you know, a big concern was, you know, getting things down to reliability and checklists and emotions were felt to be unimaginable”
4:32Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode Research that ignores affective systems can miss the target. In the NK1 antagonist depression studies, rage was never mentioned once, nor what the animal brain science shows the NK1 system is for.
“nowhere once in any of those studies in the review and anything was rage mentioned anywhere. Nowhere once was anything about what the animal literature, what the brain science shows about what the NK1 system is for”
55:27Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026Guest episode
It also comes up on
From these episodes
- Affective Neuroscience: Understanding Patients Beyond DSM DiagnosesAug 2026 · 13 points
Every point above is something said on the Psychofarm podcast, with the words as spoken and a link to the moment in the episode. It is education, not medical advice, and an episode reflects what we thought when we recorded it.