Circuits Regulating Pleasure and Happiness: The Evolution of the Amygdalar-Hippocampal-Habenular Connectivity in Vertebrates.

ABSTRACT: Appetitive-searching (reward-seeking) and distress-avoiding (misery-fleeing) behavior are essential for all free moving animals to stay alive and to have offspring. Therefore, even the oldest ocean-dwelling animal creatures, living about 560 million years ago and human ancestors, must have been capable of generating these behaviors. The current article describes the evolution of the forebrain with special reference to the development of the misery-fleeing system. Although, the earliest vertebrate ancestor already possessed a dorsal pallium, which corresponds to the human neocortex, the structure and function of the neocortex was acquired quite recently within the mammalian evolutionary line. Up to, and including, amphibians, the dorsal pallium can be considered to be an extension of the me

SUBMITTER: Loonen AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5118621 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature