Broadly the accumulative process of emotional and metabolic evaluation, as carried on by the various parts of the brain that are part of the ad hoc “evaluations” committee (the limbic system) and those changes in metabolism that, based on the evaluations, are acted out in the whole body by the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus, the main part of the system with tools, acts through a blood translator, the pituitary gland.
A part of the diencephalon of the brain, it is a major actor in the limbic system. This is a functional, not anatomic, system in the brain that influences and is influenced by emotions. Call the limbic system an ad hoc committee that decides how things are going today, based on past, present, potential, and myriad informational inputs from the somatic body. The hypothalamus gathers the data and sets the levels of the pituitary thermostat. The pituitary does what the hypothalamus tells it to do, and our whole chemical nervous system responds to the pituitary, which responds to the hypothalamus, which, along with the rest of the limbic system, decides the kind of day we need to get ready for. And to think that some doctors used to (and still) scoff at a “psychosomatic disorder.”... hypothalamus
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