The Limbic System

Our spinal column carrying the nervous highways from the body to the brain ends in a group of neural structures called the brain stem. The brain stem and a few other anatomical components of the brain in its neighbourhood group together functionally in what is called the limbic system. Because our sensing and motor nerves directly connect to it, it is in a prime position to respond when time and speed is of essence. We can regard it as the first responder to all emergency situations.

The limbic brain primarily is the autonomic emotion related brain. Its function is generally to:

  1. Respond autonomously and reactively to all state information received from various parts of the body to sustain life,
  2. Respond reactively to stimulii sent by the subconscious mind all the time except when we are sound asleep, and
  3. Respond reactively during waking periods to external information perceived by the sensory organs to generate motor response by appropriate muscles of the body.

 Because of the former pair of functions, it has a tremendous workload. It works 24/7 to run autonomic body functions to maintain homeostasis. It works 24/7 minus occasional periods of deep sleep to deal with random incursions from the subconscious mind into the conscious awareness; these random incursions from the subconscious happen all the waking periods and also when we in dream sleep. In comparison, its workload generated by the last function is rather light.

The limbic system largely responds reactively to the stimuli rooted in our feelings of finitude, likes, dislikes, and fears. It learns and stores in memory the feelings generated by our responses to such stimuli which generally require immediate action.

Because of the amount of its workload, it is over active and must work fast. In its activity, it is likely to hijack the thinking related non-assertive neocortex.

All vertebrates have some sort of survival oriented neural structure similar to our limbic system in addition to the nervous system. Invertebrate micro-organisms have only primitive sensory and motor faculties sustaining life in an inbuilt reflexive manner.