The Limbic System

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2.- "Discuss the role of the Limbic System."

It seems that there is not a global agreement on the structure components of the Limbic System. Therefore a brief history will be given next with the intention to make more understandable the role of the limbic system.

However the term limbic, that comes from the Latin word 'limbus', meaning boarder, was given by Paul Pierre Broca in 1878(1), who referred to it as the great Limbic Lobe. It was not until 1937 that it was given the role of emotion when James Papez seminal paper was titled "A proposed mechanism of emotion" then referred as the Papez circuit. Later in 1952, Paul D. MacLean came up with the term 'Limbic System' to describe Broca's Limbic Lobe. Maclean's formally suggested, with his "Triune Brain Theory", that the human brain was three brains in one: the Reptilian Complex, the Limbic System and the Neocortex (1). Even though the concept of the Limbic System has been expanded since by Nauta, Heimer and others; one is going to focus on the role of the components apparently most written about, of the Limbic System; the amygdala, the hippocampus, the hypothalamus and the