He's also found connections between drug addiction and social attachment. If morphine can eliminate the distress of separation from a mother, imagine the hold it must have on an addict. The findings may help identify those susceptible to addiction. Understanding the neurochemistry of emotion may also lead to the development of new drugs that target, say, the symptoms of schizophrenia without the emotional "blunting" of today's therapies.
It's a leap to imagine ourselves on an emotional continuum with "lower" animals. Yet we have an amazing amount of DNA in common—upward of 90 percent of our genetic makeup mirrors that of dogs. "It's time," says Panksepp, "for humans to rejoin the rest of the animal kingdom."
