Core Emotion: SEEKING

If you’ve ever stumbled across anything I’ve put out, whether a blog, an Instagram slide, or a life lesson disguised as an entertaining meme, you already know this: emotions aren’t just there for decoration. They’re the operating system running (not ruining) your life. And if this is your first time here, congrats! You’re about to realize your emotions have been puppeteering you like a Roomba stuck in an existential loop under your couch. Just like the Roomba isn’t making its own decisions and is following a preprogrammed set of rules, you’re also running on a program, an evolutionary one. And that program? It was written long before smartphones, grocery stores, or the concept of "self-improvement". This code is stored deep in the basement of your brain, in the oldest, most primal part of your neural hardware.

Deep in the basement of your brain, right where evolution left its first drafts, sits the brainstem, the oldest and most primal part of your neural hardware. It’s not there for deep thoughts or life reflections; it’s here to keep you alive. One part of this ancient command center are the core emotional networks, the factory-installed software you were born with, fully operational from day one. From these core emotions, your early experiences start tinkering with the wiring, shaping mid-level brain networks (aka secondary emotional mechanisms). As you grow up and become a fully developed human (or at least try your best), these primary and secondary emotional networks team up with the fancy, more complex tertiary brain centers. But if we had to name the MVP of core emotions, the one that fuels your entire psychical system like premium-grade motivation juice, it’s the SEEKING system.

The SEEKING Network: Your Inner Bloodhound for Life

The SEEKING system is a built-in treasure hunter that keeps you sniffing around for opportunities, rewards, and new experiences, whether that’s a job promotion, a new Netflix series, or the last slice of pizza before your roommate gets it. It stretches from your brainstem to your frontal lobes, making it the core driver of all your goal-directed behavior.

When it's active, you’re engaged, interested, and motivated: chasing ambitions, exploring new ideas, and passionately arguing on the internet about things that don’t really matter. Too much SEEKING, and you’re an impulsive maniac, clicking “Buy Now” on every online ad, jumping into projects you’ll never finish, or believing that yes, you absolutely need a pet ferret at 3 AM. At the extreme end, it fuels mania and psychotic delusions. 

When it’s underactive, you feel like a deflated balloon in a room full of sharp objects: apathetic, drained, and about as motivated as a sloth on tranquilizers.  Too little, and you might feel like a Wi-Fi router with no internet connection: disconnected from life, drowning in existential meh.

Your Daily SEEKING Rituals: Welcome to the Dopamine Casino

Activation of the SEEKING network is expressed as searching, wanting, desiring, being interested, longing, motivation, enthusiasm, anticipation, and excitement. On a behavioral level, it manifests as seeking, exploring, and trying things out. The SEEKING emotion maintains your curiosity and interest on all levels—from everyday grocery shopping and browsing TV channels or the internet to the most complex intellectual endeavors and problem-solving.  Every time you search, explore, or investigate something, your SEEKING system fires up and gives you a dopamine treat. It’s the reason you:

- Check your phone the second you wake up. (Because, you know, something important might have happened overnight … like a new meme.)
- Open the fridge five times in a row, expecting snacks to appear magically.
- Keep scrolling social media, hoping the next post will be the one that brings you eternal satisfaction. (Spoiler: it won’t.)
- Binge-watch random documentaries on obscure topics, convinced that "The History of Staplers" is actually fascinating.

Your SEEKING system doesn’t bring you pleasure from having something. It brings you pleasure from wanting something. This is why a gambler isn’t thrilled about winning, it’s the chase, the thrill of almost winning, that keeps them hooked. It’s why addiction isn’t about enjoyment, it’s about pursuit. The primary neurotransmitter that fuels the SEEKING network is dopamine. Dopamine is released every time you explore your physical, social, or informational environment.

SEEKING vs. Depression: When the Engine Stalls

A shutdown of the SEEKING system is one of the core mechanisms of depression. When SEEKING is offline, life loses its spark, meaning, and momentum. Your brain is basically running the Windows XP shutdown sound on repeat. Instead of looking for opportunities, solutions, or new experiences, your brain decides: Screw it. Let’s do absolutely nothing. This isn’t laziness, it’s a biological defense mechanism. If you lose someone or something important, your brain doesn’t just randomly decide to take a sad vacation. The shutdown has a protective purpose. Losing a key attachment, whether a person, an belonging, or even a major life role, could mean losing protection, resources, or survival advantages. This might not be so obvious in modern society, where even if you lose all your relationships, you’re still physically surrounded by humanity: roads, buildings, running water, Wi-Fi. But in a natural environment? Being alone could mean a death sentence.

At first, your brain fights like hell to restore what’s lost. This is why, in the initial phase of grief, the SEEKING and PANIC/GRIEF systems work together in a frantic scramble: searching for solutions, trying to get the person back, replaying every possible scenario where things could have gone differently. But when the loss is irreversible, the SEEKING system shuts down. It’s safer to stop searching and conserve energy. This is where the GRIEF system takes over, like hitting a psychological safe mode. In evolutionary terms, curling up in a ball and doing nothing for a while makes sense. If you were lost in the wilderness, staying put might be your best bet. Either someone finds you, or the situation changes in your favor. Your system is essentially saying: Stop wasting energy. Just wait.

So, when grief hijacks your SEEKING system and leaves you questioning your existence, listening to sad music like it’s your full-time job, know that this shutdown isn’t pointless. It's an instinctive protective mechanism when your organism decides it’s better to vegetate and appear "dead". It’s an ancient way of keeping you safe until the world feels navigable again.  

Hacking SEEKING: Can We Jumpstart the System?

Science is getting pretty creative with depression treatments, and one of the newest approaches is deep brain stimulation (DBS), basically, a pacemaker for your SEEKING system. Electrodes are implanted in specific brain areas to reignite motivation and drive, kind of like hotwiring a car that’s been dead in the driveway for weeks. But DBS isn’t just a brute-force jumpstart anymore. Recent advancements are taking it to the next level:

- Personalized DBS: We are now mapping individual brain activity to fine-tune stimulation for each person, making it smarter, more effective, and less one-size-fits-all. Think of it like an adaptive playlist that actually matches your mood instead of blasting the same five songs on repeat.
- Biomarkers for Tracking Recovery: Specific brain signals that indicate depression recovery have been found, meaning DBS could one day be adjusted in real-time based on what’s actually happening in your neural circuits. No more flying blind.
- Smarter Stimulation Devices: The latest DBS devices use AI-driven algorithms to fine-tune stimulation on the go, responding to brain activity like a neural thermostat, keeping your SEEKING system in the sweet spot; not too flat, not too manic.

And here’s where it gets wild: Non-invasive brain stimulation techniques are also making waves, with research showing that people might soon be able to administer brain stimulation at home. Yes, we’re this close to having a brain-boosting headset that could help regulate motivation without requiring actual brain surgery. While DBS is still mainly reserved for severe, treatment-resistant depression, these advancements could mean a future where rebooting a sluggish SEEKING system is as easy as recharging your phone.

TL;DR

Your SEEKING system is the biological engine behind motivation, curiosity, and exploration. It keeps you searching for meaning, rewards, and stimulation, whether that’s learning new things, doomscrolling, or hunting for the TV remote like it’s a missing artifact. When it’s too active, you’re impulsive, restless, and possibly making terrible life choices at 2 AM. When it’s shut down, life feels like a blank, gray screen of meaninglessness. So, next time you find yourself mindlessly opening your fridge, scrolling your phone, or googling weird facts about deep-sea creatures at 1 AM—congratulations! Your SEEKING system is alive and well. Now, go forth and hunt down life’s dopamine-fueled adventures.

References

    Davis, K. L., Montag, C. (2019). Selected principles of Pankseppian affective neuroscience. Frontiers in neuroscience, 12(1), 1025.
    Badt, K. (2017). A Conversation with Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp. Retrieved from HuffPost.