We must learn to make a conscious effort to discriminate among the various limbic reactions by using our prefrontal cortex to logically interpret their meaning, and then respond with an appropriate external action. Without such conscious discrimination, we can be easily swayed, by our personal and subjective emotions, to act in a fashion that is contrary to reality and not beneficial for the involved parties. This article will briefly discuss how the limbic system functions and how our limbic system reactions can best be utilized. Therefore, the reward and punishment centers undoubtedly constitute one of the most important of all the controllers of our bodily activities, our drives, our aversions, motivations. As indicated above, for the most part, we function via a stimulus response mechanism, very much like all other animals including hamsters, rats, tigers and dogs.
All animals do everything they can to avoid pain and accentuate pleasure.
This statement would be true if we utilized and cultivated our higher faculties, but very few of us do this beyond the level of maintaining adequate social graces for the sake of appearance. After reading this chapter in Basic Neuroscience I checked my head for scars. I thought that maybe I could blame my problems on an operation I had without my knowing it took place. No such luck, my cortex is still intact. On a very serious note, most of us can see that at times, we truly do act as if we are devoid of a prefrontal cortex.