Todd, Rather than use this as evidence for my premise - I'd just ask a question that these types of findings always suggest to me.

The CNS of mammals was designed to allow greater flexibility in the choice of behavior - than the directly wired stimulus / response models that these new evolutionary models improved upon.

At the heart of such a system had to be a module that actually implemented the decision - between behavior choices that were not optimum and the one that was (hopefully) the best choice.

Where it was located is not so important but the amygdala or its evolutionary precurser seems likely.

What seems so improbable to me is that evolution would have created a cortex in just a few higher mammals - in order to replace that existing choice module with another one. What was wrong with the previous one - that in all mammals functions perfectly well to bring in emotional input tags from instincts, dispositions, memories of past events, etc. and resolve them to a beneficial behavior choice.

Here you have a module already capable of resolving multiple inputs in real time and initiating action - the exact function that is required to make informed behavior choices. A true gem of evolution.

So, did evolution then replace this module with the primate cortex? If so, how does the cortex incorporate inputs from those other areas - which we know affect behavior choices in humans beyond doubt. And, how do human infants make behavior choices before their cortex begins operating effectively? They cry, crawl, gurgle, wave their hands, swallow food placed in their mouth, place things in their mouths, etc. There are other questions along this line.

Would not evoultion simply provide the cortex as another source for inputs into the existing human decision-making module? (My premise is that it does. It provides results of intellectual conclusions - translated to appropriately weighted emotions for resolution in the existing decision module.)

Any other explanation seems totally ridiculous to me.

Margaret