The difference between serum and plasma is that plasma is the liquid part of blood, that is, whole

blood after the removal of red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets by centrifuging. It is
prevented from clotting with an anticoagulant such as sodium citrate or EDTA.
Serum is the liquid part after the blood is allowed to clot (no anticoagulant) and the blood is spun
down (centrifuged) to remove the clot, which is made from fibrin plus other clotting factors, with
the cells. In other words, plasma includes the clotting factors brcause the blood is prevented from
clotting, while serum is the liquid part left over afer the blood is allowed to clot and separate.
They are both used on various blood tests, some of which are specific for plasma, some for serum.
When a unit of blood is taken to be transfused, anticoagulant is added so that the different
components of blood can be used in different ways. The use of the RBCs is well known, but WBCs,
platelets and plasma are given separately. As a matter of fact, whole blood is almost never given
because the other components can be used more effectively in other, specific situations.
Serum is also the colloquial term for a substance containing antivenin, or anti-venom, to the
venom of specific animals. They are made by injecting small amounts of venom into a large animal
such as a horse or sheep, inducing antibody production in that animal. The antibodies are then
separated from the rest of the blood and sold. (Such as rattlesnake serum, or rattlesnake
antivenin). Serum-produced antibodies are also used in the production of laboratory chemicals to
react with RBCs to produce chemicals sold to laboratories for typing blood. This is also termed
serum (pl: sera).

Limbic system

The limbic system is a set of brain structures located on both sides of the thalamus, immediately beneath
the cerebrum.[1] It has also been referred to as the paleomammalian cortex. It is not a separate system
but a collection of structures from the telencephalon, diencephalon, and mesencephalon.[2] It includes
the olfactory bulbs, hippocampus, hypothalamus, amygdala, anterior thalamic nuclei, fornix, columns of
fornix, mammillary body, septum pellucidum, habenular commissure, cingulate gyrus, parahippocampal
gyrus, limbic cortex, and limbic midbrain areas.[3]
The limbic system supports a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, motivation, long-term
memory, and olfaction.[4] Emotional life is largely housed in the limbic system, and it has a great deal to do
with the formation of memories.
Although the term only originated in the 1940s, some neuroscientists, including Joseph LeDoux, have
suggested that the concept of a functionally unified limbic system should be abandoned
as obsolete because it is grounded mainly in historical concepts of brain anatomy that are no longer
accepted as accurate.[5]
Contents
[hide]

1Structure

2Function
o

2.1Hippocampus

2.2Amygdala

3Evolution

4Clinical significance

5Society and culture

o

5.1Etymology and history

5.2Academic dispute

6See also

7References

8External links

Structure[edit]

Anatomical components of the limbic system

The limbic system was originally defined by Paul Broca as a series of corticalstructures surrounding the
limit between the cerebral hemispheres and the brainstem: the border, or limbus, of the brain. These
structures were known together as the limbic lobe.[6] Further studies began to associate these areas with
emotional and motivational processes and linked them to subcortical components that were grouped into
the limbic system.[7] The existence of such a system as an isolated entity responsible for the neurological
regulation of emotion has gone into disuse and currently it is considered as one of the many parts of the
brain that regulate visceral, autonomic processes.[8]
Therefore, the definition of anatomical structures considered part of the limbic system is a controversial
subject. The following structures are, or have been considered, part of the limbic system:[9][10]

Cortical areas:

Limbic lobe

Orbitofrontal cortex, a region in the frontal lobe involved in the process of decision-making.

Piriform cortex, part of the olfactory system.

Entorhinal cortex, related with memory and associative components.

Hippocampus and associated structures, which play a central role in the consolidation of
new memories.

Fornix, a white matter structure connecting the hippocampus with other brain structures,
particularly the mammillary bodies and septal nuclei

Subcortical areas:

Septal nuclei, a set of structures that lie in front of the lamina terminalis, considered a
pleasure zone.

Amygdala, located deep within the temporal lobes and related with a number of emotional
processes.

Nucleus accumbens: involved in reward, pleasure, and addiction.

Diencephalic structures:

Hypothalamus: a center for the limbic system, connected with the frontal lobes, septal nuclei
and the brain stem reticular formationvia the medial forebrain bundle, with the hippocampus via the
fornix, and with the thalamus via the mammillothalamic fasciculus. It regulates a great number of
autonomic processes.

Mammillary bodies, part of the hypothalamus that receives signals from the hippocampus
via the fornix and projects them to the thalamus.

Anterior nuclei of thalamus receive input from the mammillary bodies. Involved in memory
processing.

Function[edit]
The structures of the limbic system are involved in motivation, emotion, learning, and memory. The limbic
system is where the subcortical structures meet the cerebral cortex.[1] The limbic system operates by
influencing the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system. It is highly interconnected with
the nucleus accumbens, which plays a role in sexual arousal and the "high" derived from
certain recreational drugs. These responses are heavily modulated by dopaminergic projections from the
limbic system. In 1954, Olds and Milner found that rats with metal electrodes implanted into their nucleus
accumbens, as well as their septal nuclei, repeatedly pressed a lever activating this region, and did so in
preference to eating and drinking, eventually dying of exhaustion.[11] The limbic system also includes the
basal ganglia. The basal ganglia are a set of subcortical structures that direct intentional movements. The
basal ganglia are located near the thalamus and hypothalamus. They receive input from the cerebral
cortex, which sends outputs to the motor centers in the brain stem. A part of the basal ganglia called the
striatum controls posture and movement. Recent studies indicate that, if there is an inadequate supply of
dopamine, the striatum is affected, which can lead to visible behavioral symptoms of Parkinson's disease.[1]
The limbic system is also tightly connected to the prefrontal cortex. Some scientists contend that this
connection is related to the pleasure obtained from solving problems. To cure severe emotional disorders,
this connection was sometimes surgically severed, a procedure of psychosurgery, called a prefrontal
lobotomy (this is actually a misnomer). Patients having undergone this procedure often became passive
and lacked all motivation.

The limbic system is often classified as a cerebral structure. This structure is closely linked to olfaction,
emotions, drives, autonomic regulation, memory, and pathologically to encephalopathy, epilepsy, psychotic
symptoms, cognitive defects.[12] The functional relevance of the limbic system has proven to serve many
different functions such as affects/emotions, memory, sensory processing, time perception, attention,
consciousness, instincts, autonomic/vegetative control, and actions/motor behavior. Some of the disorders
associated with the limbic system are epilepsy and schizophrenia.[13]

Hippocampus[edit]
Various processes of cognition involve the hippocampus.
Spatial memory[edit]
The first and most widely researched area concerns memory, spatial memory in particular. Spatial memory
was found to have many sub-regions in the hippocampus, such as the dentate gyrus (DG) in the dorsal
hippocampus, the left hippocampus, and the parahippocampal region. The dorsal hippocampus was found
to be an important component for the generation of new neurons, called adult-born granules (GC), in
adolescence and adulthood.[14] These new neurons contribute to pattern separation in spatial memory,
increasing the firing in cell networks, and overall causing stronger memory formations.
While the dorsal hippocampus is involved in spatial memory formation, the left hippocampus is a participant
in the recall of these spatial memories. Eichenbaum[15] and his team found, when studying the hippocampal
lesions in rats, that the left hippocampus is critical for effectively combining the what, when, and where
qualities of each experience to compose the retrieved memory. This makes the left hippocampus a key
component in the retrieval of spatial memory. However, Spreng[16] found that the left hippocampus is, in fact,
a general concentrated region for binding together bits and pieces of memory composed not only by the
hippocampus, but also by other areas of the brain to be recalled at a later time. Eichenbaums research in
2007 also demonstrates that the parahippocampal area of the hippocampus is another specialized region
for the retrieval of memories just like the left hippocampus.
Learning[edit]
The hippocampus, over the decades, has also been found to have a huge impact in learning.
CurlikShors[17] examined the effects of neurogenesis in the hippocampus and its effects on learning. This
researcher and his team employed many different types of mental and physical training on their subjects,
and found that the hippocampus is highly responsive to these latter tasks. Thus, they discovered an
upsurge of new neurons and neural circuits in the hippocampus as a result of the training, causing an
overall improvement in the learning of the task. This neurogenesis contributes to the creation of adult-born
granules cells (GC), cells also described by Eichenbaum[15] in his own research on neurogenesis and its
contributions to learning. The creation of these cells exhibited enhanced excitability in the dentate gyrus
(DG) of the dorsal hippocampus, impacting the hippocampus and its contribution to the learning process.[15]
Hippocampus damage[edit]
Damage relayed to the hippocampal region of the brain has reported vast effects on overall cognitive
functioning, particularly memory such as spatial memory. As previously mentioned, spatial memory is a
cognitive function greatly intertwined with the hippocampus. While damage to the hippocampus may be a
result of a brain injury or other injuries of that sort, researchers particularly investigated the effects that high
emotional arousal and certain types of drugs had on the recall ability in this specific memory type. In
particular, in a study performed by Parkard,[18] rats were given the task of correctly making their way through
a maze. In the first condition, rats were stressed by shock or restraint which caused a high emotional
arousal. When completing the maze task, these rats had an impaired effect on their hippocampaldependent memory when compared to the control group. Then, in a second condition, a group of rats were
injected with anxiogenic drugs. Like the former these results reported similar outcomes, in that
hippocampal-memory was also impaired. Studies such as these reinforce the impact that the hippocampus

has on memory processing, in particular the recall function of spatial memory. Furthermore, impairment to
the hippocampus can occur from prolonged exposure to stress hormones such as Glucocorticoids (GCs),
which target the hippocampus and cause disruption in explicit memory.[19]
In an attempt to curtail life-threatening kepileptic seizures, 27-year-old Henry Gustav Molaison underwent
bilateral removal of almost all of his hippocampus in 1953. Over the course of fifty years he participated in
thousands of tests and research projects that provided specific information on exactly what he had lost.
Semantic and episodic events faded within minutes, having never reached his long term memory, yet
emotions, unconnected from the details of causation, were often retained. Dr. Suzanne Corkin who worked
with him for 46 years until his death described the contribution of this tragic "experiment" in her 2013 book.
[20]

Amygdala[edit]
Episodic-autobiographical memory (EAM) networks[edit]
Another integrative part of the limbic system, the amygdala is involved in many cognitive processes. Like
the hippocampus, processes in the amygdala seems to impact memory; however, it is not spatial memory
as in the hippocampus but episodic-autobiographical memory (EAM) networks. Markowitsch's[21] amygdala
research shows it encodes, stores, and retrieves EAM memories. To delve deeper into these types of
processes by the amygdala, Markowitsch[21] and his team provided extensive evidence through
investigations that the amygdalas main function is to charge cues so that mnemonic events of a specific
emotional significance can be successfully searched within the appropriate neural nets and re-activated.
These cues for emotional events created by the amygdala encompass the EAM networks previously
mentioned.
Attentional and emotional processes[edit]
Besides memory, the amygdala also seems to be an important brain region involved in attentional and
emotional processes. First, to define attention in cognitive terms, attention is the ability to home in on some
stimuli while ignoring others. Thus, the amygdala seems to be an important structure in this ability.
Foremost, however, this structure was historically thought to be linked to fear, allowing the individual to take
action to rid that fear in some sort. However, as time has gone by, researchers such as Pessoa,
[22]
generalized this concept with help from evidence of EEG recordings, and concluded that the amygdala
helps an organism to define a stimulus and therefore respond accordingly. However, when the amygdala
was initially thought to be linked to fear, this gave way for research in the amygdala for emotional
processes. Kheirbek[14] demonstrated research that the amygdala is involved in emotional processes, in
particular the ventral hippocampus. He described the ventral hippocampus as having a role in
neurogenesis and the creation of adult-born granule cells (GC). These cells not only were a crucial part of
neurogenesis and the strengthening of spatial memory and learning in the hippocampus but also appear to
be an essential component in the amygdala. A deficit of these cells, as Pessoa (2009) predicted in his
studies, would result in low emotional functioning, leading to high retention rate of mental diseases, such
as anxiety disorders.
Social processing[edit]
Social processing, specifically the evaluation of faces in social processing, is an area of cognition specific
to the amygdala. In a study done by Todorov,[23] fMRI tasks were performed with participants to evaluate
whether the amygdala was involved in the general evaluation of faces. After the study, Todorov concluded
from his fMRI results that the amygdala did indeed play a key role in the general evaluation of faces.
However, in a study performed by researchers Koscik[24] and his team, the trait of trustworthiness was
particularly examined in the evaluation of faces. Koscik and his team demonstrated that the amygdala was
involved in evaluating the trustworthiness of an individual. They investigated how brain damage to the
amygdala played a role in trustworthiness, and found that individuals that suffered damage tended to
confuse trust and betrayal, and thus placed trust in those having done them wrong. Furthermore, Rule,

along with his colleagues, expanded on the idea of the amygdala in its critique of trustworthiness in
others by performing a study in 2009 in which he examined the amygdala's role in evaluating general first
impressions and relating them to real-world outcomes. Their study involved first impressions of CEOs. Rule
demonstrated that while the amygdala did play a role in the evaluation of trustworthiness, as observed by
Koscik in his own research two years later in 2011, the amygdala also played a generalized role in the
overall evaluation of first impression of faces. This latter conclusion, along with Todorovs study on the
amygdalas role in general evaluations of faces and Kosciks research on trustworthiness and the
amygdala, further solidified evidence that the amygdala plays a role in overall social processing.
[25]

Evolution[edit]
Paul D. MacLean, as part of his triune brain theory, hypothesized that the limbic system is older than other
parts of the fore-brain, and that it developed to manage fight or flight circuitry, which is an evolutionary
necessity for reptiles as well as mammals (including humans). MacLean postulated that the human brain
has evolved three components, that evolved successively, with more recent components developing at the
top/front. These components are, respectively:
1 - The archipallium or primitive ("reptilian") brain, comprising the structures of the brain stem - medulla,
pons, cerebellum, mesencephalon, the oldest basal nuclei - the globus pallidus and the olfactory bulbs.
2 - The paleopallium or intermediate ("old mammalian") brain, comprising the structures of the limbic
system.
3 - The neopallium, also known as the superior or rational ("new mammalian") brain, comprises almost the
whole of the hemispheres (made up of a more recent type of cortex, called neocortex) and some
subcortical neuronal groups. It corresponds to the brain of the superior mammals, thus including the
primates and, as a consequence, the human species. It should be noted that similar development of the
neocortex in mammalian species unrelated to humans and primates has also occurred, for example
in cetaceans and elephants; thus the designation of 'superior mammals' is not an evolutionary one, as it
has occurred independently in different species. The evolution of higher degrees of intelligence is an
example of convergent evolution, and is also seen in non-mammals such as birds.
According to Maclean, each of the components, although connected with the others, retained "their peculiar
types of intelligence, subjectivity, sense of time and space, memory, mobility and other less specific
functions".
However, while the categorization into structures is reasonable, the recent studies of the limbic system
of tetrapods, both living and extinct, have challenged several aspects of this hypothesis, notably the
accuracy of the terms "reptilian" and "old mammalian". The common ancestors of reptiles
and mammals had a well-developed limbic system in which the basic subdivisions and connections of the
amygdalar nuclei were established.[26] Further, birds, which evolved from the dinosaurs, which in turn
evolved separately but around the same time as the mammals, have a well-developed limbic system. While
the anatomic structures of the limbic system are different in birds than in mammals, there are functional
equivalents.

Clinical significance[edit]
Damage to the structures of limbic system results in conditions like Alzheimer's disease, anterograde
amnesia, retrograde amnesia, and Kluver-Bucy syndrome.[citation needed]

Society and culture[edit]

Etymology and history[edit]

The term limbic comes from the Latin limbus, for "border" or "edge", or, particularly in medical terminology,
a border of an anatomical component. Paul Broca coined the term based on its physical location in the
brain, sandwiched between two functionally different components.
The limbic system is a term that was introduced in 1949 by the American physician and
neuroscientist, Paul D. MacLean.[27][28] The French physician Paul Broca first called this part of the brain le
grand lobe limbique in 1878.[6] He examined the differentiation between deeply recessed cortical tissue and
underlying, subcortical nuclei.[29] However, most of its putative role in emotion was developed only in 1937
when the American physician James Papez described his anatomical model of emotion, the Papez circuit.
[30]

The first evidence that the limbic system was responsible for the cortical representation of emotions was
discovered in 1939, by Heinrich Kluver and Paul Bucy. Kluver and Bucy, after much research,
demonstrated that the bilateral removal of the temporal lobes in monkeys created an extreme behavioral
syndrome. After performing a temporal lobectomy, the monkeys showed a decrease in aggression. The
animals revealed a reduced threshold to visual stimuli, and were thus unable to recognize objects that were
once familiar.[31] MacLean expanded these ideas to include additional structures in a more dispersed "limbic
system," more on the lines of the system described above.[28] MacLean developed the intriguing theory of
the triune brain to explain its evolution and to try to reconcile rational human behavior with its more primal
and violent side. He became interested in the brains control of emotion and behavior. After initial studies of
brain activity in epileptic patients, he turned to cats, monkeys, and other models, using electrodes to
stimulate different parts of the brain in conscious animals recording their responses.[32] In the 1950s, he
began to trace individual behaviors like aggression and sexual arousal to their physiological sources. He
analyzed the brains center of emotions, the limbic system, and described an area that includes structures
called the hippocampus and amygdala. Developing observations made by Papez, he determined that the
limbic system had evolved in early mammals to control fight-or-flight responses and react to both
emotionally pleasurable and painful sensations. The concept is now broadly accepted in neuroscience.
[33]
Additionally, MacLean said that the idea of the limbic system leads to a recognition that its presence
represents the history of the evolution of mammals and their distinctive family way of life.In the 1960s, Dr.
MacLean enlarged his theory to address the human brains overall structure and divided its evolution into
three parts, an idea that he termed the triune brain. In addition to identifying the limbic system, he pointed
to a more primitive brain called the R-complex, related to reptiles, which controls basic functions like
muscle movement and breathing. The third part, the neocortex, controls speech and reasoning and is the
most recent evolutionary arrival.[34] The concept of the limbic system has since been further expanded and
developed by Walle Nauta, Lennart Heimer and others.

Academic dispute[edit]
There is controversy over the use of the term limbic system, with scientists such as LeDoux arguing that
the term be considered obsoleteand abandoned.[35] Originally, the limbic system was believed to be the
emotional center of the brain, with cognition being the business of the neocortex. However, cognition
depends on acquisition and retention of memories, in which the hippocampus, a primary limbic structure, is
involved: hippocampus damage causes severe cognitive (memory) deficits. More important, the
"boundaries" of the limbic system have been repeatedly redefined because of advances in neuroscience.
Therefore, while it is true that limbic structures are more closely related to emotion, the brain can be
thought of as an integrated whole.