After providing all the funding for The Brain from Top to Bottom for over 10 years, the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction informed us that because of budget cuts, they were going to be forced to stop sponsoring us as of March 31st, 2013.

We have approached a number of organizations, all of which have recognized the value of our work. But we have not managed to find the funding we need. We must therefore ask our readers for donations so that we can continue updating and adding new content to The Brain from Top to Bottom web site and blog.

Please, rest assured that we are doing our utmost to continue our mission of providing the general public with the best possible information about the brain and neuroscience in the original spirit of the Internet: the desire to share information free of charge and with no adverstising.

Whether your support is moral, financial, or both, thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Bruno Dubuc, Patrick Robert, Denis Paquet, and Al Daigen




Monday, 29 October 2012
Dusting Off the Triune Brain and the Limbic System

In neuroscience, as in other fields, some concepts are so convenient that it no longer even occurs to us to question them. But no scientific knowledge can be taken for granted forever, so it makes sense to take such old concepts down from the shelf and dust them off from time to time.

Recently, two neuroanatomists, Pierre-Yves Risold and Helmut Wicht, did just that with two models—the “triune brain” and the “limbic system”—that have become questionable, to say the least, in light of more recent neuroanatomical findings.

To summarize the flaws thus found in these two models, as well as the ways in which they may still be useful, we have made the following changes in The Brain from Top to Bottom:

– We have added a History module, The Triune Brain and the Limbic System: What To Keep, What To Discard.

– We have added a link to this module on the page where we discuss the limbic system, as well as on the page where we discuss Papez’s circuit, a subset of the limbic system.

– On both of these pages, we have also added a link to a History module that already appeared on this site but is highly relevant to the present discussion: The Quest for the “Emotional Brain”.

– We have also added the same cautionary information to the page where we describe the three components of the triune brain according to the theory that Paul MacLean began to popularize in the 1960s.

i_lien Avez-vous un « cerveau reptilien » ?
i_lien Émotions : mais où est le système limbique ?

Emotions and the Brain, Evolution and the Brain | Comments Closed


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