Affective Circuits

In recent decades, Africans have migrated to Europe in larger numbers than ever before; Africans are now a visible part of Europe s multiethnic landscape. The present volume brings together essays by an international group of social scientists which focus on economic and affective flows of goods, resources, and people, with careful attention to the regulatory forces of state and non-state (kin/friends/partners) actors. The aim is to integrate a scattered, but overlapping, set of literatures addressing care and intimacy in a variety of different ways among which are marriage migration, domestic labor, global care chains, romance travel, and moving for health resources. While any one paper may focus more on what the editors call affective circuits --the circulation of migrants, kin and goods--or on regulatory regimes, for example regulation of migration, labor, and material flows through state apparatuses, each addresses the complex intersections of the two dimensions of African migration to Europe. Each chapter focuses on the spaces between Africa and Europe and backs up arguments with ethnographic data and descriptions ranging across numerous different countries. This volume promises to become a benchmark in the burgeoning field of migration studies in anthropology. "

Application of optogenetic and pharmacogenetic tools to study the neural circuits underlying emotional valence, feeding, arousal and motivated behaviors has provided crucial insights into brain function. Expression of light sensitive proteins into specific neurons and subsequent stimulation by light (optogenetics) to control neuronal activity or expression of designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADD) in specific neuronal populations with subsequent activation or suppression of neuronal activity by an otherwise inert ligand (pharmacogenetics) provides control over defined elements of neural circuits. These novel tools have provided a more in depth understanding into several questions about brain function. These include: • Regulation of sleep-wake transition by the interaction of hypocretin neurons of lateral hypothalamus and nor adrenergic neurons of the locus coruleaus • Regulation of feeding by AGRP and POMC neurons in arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus • Place preference and positive reinforcement by activation of DA neuron of VTA • Place aversion by activation of VTA GABA and lateral habenula neurons • Opposing influences on reinforcement by activation of D1 and D2 expressing medium spiny neurons of dorsal striatum and nucleus accumbens The list still grows... From cell type specific manipulations to signaling properties in the cell (Dietz et al 2012) with unprecedented temporal resolution, these tools revolutionize the exploration of pathways/connectivity. Recent years also witnessed the extension of applying these tools from studying emotional valence and motivated behavior to reactivation of memory. c-fos based genetic approaches allowed us to integrate light sensitive opsins or DREADD receptor into specific neurons that are activated by certain learning events (for example fear) (Garner et al 2012; Liu et al 2012). In this Research Topic, we welcome researchers to contribute original research articles, review articles, methods and commentary on topics utilizing optogenetic and pharmacogenetic tools to study the neural circuits underlying emotional valence, motivation, reinforcement and memory. We believe the Research Topic will shine light on various questions we have about brain function by using novel optogenetic and pharmacogenetic tools and will hopefully inspire ongoing research to overcome the hurdles of using these tools to advance clinical applications.

The influx of African migrants into Europe in recent years has raised important issues about changing labor economies, new technologies of border control, and the effects of armed conflict. But attention to such broad questions often obscures a fundamental fact of migration: its effects on ordinary life. Affective Circuits brings together essays by an international group of well-known anthropologists to place the migrant family front and center. Moving between Africa and Europe, the book explores the many ways migrants sustain and rework family ties and intimate relationships at home and abroad. It demonstrates how their quotidian efforts—on such a mass scale—contribute to a broader process of social regeneration. The contributors point to the intersecting streams of goods, people, ideas, and money as they circulate between African migrants and their kin who remain back home. They also show the complex ways that emotions become entangled in these exchanges. Examining how these circuits operate in domains of social life ranging from child fosterage to binational marriages, from coming-of-age to healing and religious rituals, the book also registers the tremendous impact of state officials, laws, and policies on migrant experience. Together these essays paint an especially vivid portrait of new forms of kinship at a time of both intense mobility and ever-tightening borders.

In Affective Neuroscience, Jaak Panksepp provides the most up-to-date information about the brain-operating systems that organize the fundamental emotional tendencies of all mammals. Presenting complex material in a readable manner, the book offers a comprehensive summary of the fundamental neural sources of human and animal feelings, as well as a conceptual framework for studying emotional systems of the brain. Panksepp approaches emotions from the perspective of basic emotion theory but does not fail to address the complex issues raised by constructionist approaches.

Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience to better understand emotion. We are hardwired to connect with one another, and we connect through our emotions. Our brains, bodies, and minds are inseparable from the emotions that animate them. Normal human development relies on the cultivation of relationships with others to form and nurture the self-regulatory circuits that enable emotion to enrich, rather than enslave, our lives. And just as emotionally traumatic events can tear apart the fabric of family and psyche, the emotions can become powerful catalysts for the transformations that are at the heart of the healing process. In this book, the latest addition to the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, leading neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, therapy researchers, and clinicians illuminate how to regulate emotion in a healthy way. A variety of emotions, both positive and negative, are examined in detail, drawing on both research and clinical observations. The role of emotion in bodily regulation, dyadic connection, marital communication, play, well-being, health, creativity, and social engagement is explored. The Healing Power of Emotion offers fresh, exciting, original, and groundbreaking work from the leading figures studying and working with emotion today. Contributors include: Jaak Panksepp, Stephen W. Porges, Colwyn Trevarthen, Ed Tronick, Allan N. Schore, Daniel J. Siegel, Diana Fosha, Pat Ogden, Marion F. Solomon, Susan Johnson, and Dan Hughes.

Building on the legacy of the groundbreaking first edition, the Editors of this unique volume have selected more than 100 leading emotion researchers from around the world and asked them to address 14 fundamental questions about the nature and origins of emotion. For example: What is an emotion? How are emotions organized in the brain? How do emotion and cognition interact? How are emotions embodied in the social world? How and why are emotions communicated? How are emotions physically embodied? What develops in emotional development? At the end of each chapter, the Editors--Andrew Fox, Regina Lapate, Alexander Shackman, and Richard Davidson--highlight key areas of agreement and disagreement. In the final chapter--The Nature of Emotion: A Research Agenda for the 21st Century--the Editors outline their own perspective on the most important challenges facing the field today and the most fruitful avenues for future research. Not a textbook offering a single viewpoint, The Nature of Emotion reveals the central issues in emotion research and theory in the words of many of the leading scientists working in the field today, from senior researchers to rising stars, providing a unique and highly accessible guide for students, researchers, and clinicians.

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The massive scale and complexity of international migration today tends to obscure the nuanced ways migrant families seek a sense of belonging. In this book, Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg takes readers back and forth between Cameroon and Germany to explore how migrant mothers—through the careful and at times difficult management of relationships—juggle belonging in multiple places at once: their new country, their old country, and the diasporic community that bridges them. Feldman-Savelsberg introduces readers to several Cameroonian mothers, each with her own unique history, concerns, and voice. Through scenes of their lives—at a hometown association’s year-end party, a celebration for a new baby, a visit to the Foreigners’ Office, and many others—as well as the stories they tell one another, Feldman-Savelsberg enlivens our thinking about migrants’ lives and the networks and repertoires that they draw on to find stability and, ultimately, belonging. Placing women’s individual voices within international social contexts, this book unveils new, intimate links between the geographical and the generational as they intersect in the dreams, frustrations, uncertainties, and resolve of strong women holding families together across continents.