James wenceslaus papez, his circuit, and emotion

Kalyan B Bhattacharyya

Annals of Indian Academy of Neurology 2017 20(3):207-210

James Papez worked on the anatomical substrates of emotion and described a circuit, mainly composed of the hippocampus, thalamus and cingulum, and published his observations in 1937. However, such an idea existed before him, as evidenced by the rudimentary indications from Paul Broca, and Paul MacLean added some other structures like, septum, amygdala, and hypothalamus in its ambit and called it the limbic system. Paul Ivan Yakovlev, proposed a circuit which also referred to orbitofrontal, insular, anterior temporal lobe, and other nuclei of thalamus. Further works hinted at cerebellar projections into this system and the clinical picture of aggression, arousal and positive feeding responses with stimulation of cerebellar nuclei, attests its possible role. Finally, the work of Heinrich Klüver and Paul Bucy of the United States of America on ablating the temporal lobes and amygdala and the resultant behaviour of the animals, almost incontrovertibly adduced evidence for the operation of a neural circuitry in the genesis of emotion. Additionally, Papez circuit may also be concerned with memory and damage to its various components in Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Korsakoff's syndrome, semantic dementia, and global amnesia, where cognitive disturbance is almost universal, lends credence to its putative role.

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