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The limbic system of the brain is also called the emotional brain. It consists of structures that evolved recently in terms of vertebrate evolution.
[P. 132 presents a diagram illustrating the roles of the amygdala and hypothalamus in activating states based on sensory inputs.] [The system creates] the feeling of the emotion in conjunction to the object [or event] that excited it. [This provides the nexus between event and feeling. That connection allows the ana....
Damasio, Antonio R., "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain", Penguin Books, 1994, 132
The reciprocal interconnection between the reticular formation and the limbic system is of particular importance in pain processes....the phylogenetically old medial ascending systems, which are separate from but in parallel with the newer neospinothalamic projection system, gain access to the complex circuitry of the l....
Melzack, R. and Wall, P. D., "The Challenge of Pain (Reprint of 1988 edition)", Penguin Books, 2008, 134-5
The amygdala may be significant for the analgesic effects of systemic morphine and for fear-conditioned descending antinociception.
McMahon, S. B., Koltzenberg, M., Tracy, I., and Turk, D. C., "Wall and Melzack's Textbook of Pain", Elsevier Saunders, 2013, 192
...several limbic structures are particularly concerned with the affective nature of sensory sensations--that is, whether the sensations are pleasant or unpleasant. These affective qualities are also called reward or punishment, or satisfaction or aversion. Electrical s....
Guyton, A. C. and Hall, J. E., "Textbook of Medical Physiology, Eleventh Edition", Elsevier Saunders, 2006, 735
...the term limbic system has been expanded to mean the entire neuronal circuitry that controls emotional behavior and motivational drives.
A major part of the limbic system is the hypothalamus, with its related structures.
Guyton, A. C. and Hall, J. E., "Textbook of Medical Physiology, Eleventh Edition", Elsevier Saunders, 2006, 731
[The brain can be looked at as having three parts: the brainstem, which does basic housekeeping; the limbic brain, which determines the relevance of stimuli and assigns emotional relevance; the cortex, especially the prefrontal cortex, which contextualizes experience and provides social understanding.] “The emotional br....
Van Der Kolk, Bessel, "The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma", Penguin Books, 2015, 59-61
[The fornix connects the hippocampus to the hypothalamus. The stria terminalis connects the amygdala to the hypothalamus. The MacLean concept of "limbic system" has come to be synonymous with "emotional brain."]
The major areas included in the limbic system are the amygdala, hippocampus, septal area, preoptic are....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 71
As mentioned previously, there are a great number of distinct neurochemically coded pathways, both ascending and descending, that project through the hypothalamus. These circuits ramify widely in the brain and provide the best opportunity we have at present to link specific types of psychoemotional processes to specific....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 76
In addition to providing modulatory control over behaviors elaborated by the reptilian brain, the limbic system helps generate the basic emotions that mediate various pro-social behaviors, including maternal nurturance, associated carressive behaviors, separation distress vocalizations, playfulness, and various other fo....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 71
In addition, a great number of pathways run through the corridor of the lateral hypothalamus, the best known of which is the medial forebrain bundle (MFB). This is the area where self-stimulation and a variety of stimulus-bound emotive behaviors can be obtained with greatest ease through localized electrical stimulation....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 76
Surrounding this reptilian core and interdigitating with it at many points is the oldmammalian brain, which primarily elaborates ancient "family values” and other uniquely mammalian emotional tendencies (Figure 4.8). This intermediate layer interacts intimately with the visceral organs. It resembles a fringe around the....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 70
[Medial hypothalamic neurons contact neurons in the VTA which signal levels of various nutrients in the blood, state of thermoreceptors , levels of sex hormones, etc.]
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 167
It is remarkable that these changes [action potentials] can occur up to hundreds of times per second in certain highly responsive neurons, which are most abundant in the sensory and thalamic-neocortical, “cognitive" regions of the brain. Other neurons rarely fire more than a few times per second. These slower-paced type....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 84
Within the midbrain, we find the lowest level of integration for most of the emotional operating systems that we will discuss. Most emotional command systems make strong connections with midline visceral structures—the central gray around the cerebral aqueduct (also called the periaqueductal gray) and surrounding reticu....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 77
These pathways [within the limbic system] include two major outputs of the amygdala. The arching stria terminalis, which was molded by the backward rotation of the developing cerebral hemispheres, sends descending information to a broad synaptic field extending from the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis to the ventrom....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 76
The old-mammalian brain, or the limbic system, adds behavioral and psychological resolution to all of the emotions and specifically mediates the social emotions such as separation distress/social bonding, playfulness, and maternal nurturance. The highly expanded neomammalian cortex generates higher cognitive functions,....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 43
Complex social feelings in mammals emerged hand in hand with the evolution of the limbic system.
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 223
A variety of functional distinctions between visceral and somatic parts of the brain are apparent here. Thalamic tissue, on the dorsal portion of the diencephalon, collects information from the outside world. Its properties are quite distinct from those of hypothalamic tissue, located on the ventral diencephalon, which....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 69-70
The mesencephalic central gray is situated just below the colliculi; as mentioned, this tissue contains basic neural components for many emotional processes, including fear, anger, sexuality, pleasure, and pain.
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 77
Such pathways give the limbic system its essential form, for they can be visualized with the naked eye (Figure 4.10). They include the fornix, the stria terminalis, the ventral amygdalofugal pathway, the mamillothalamic tract, the habenulopeduncular tract, and the medial forebrain bundle. These are the prominent landmar....
Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 76
End of included memoes/notes