I appreciate this question! As I developed my model for resilience-building in 2016-2017, I did a deep dive into MacLean's original work and was pretty shocked about how much was oversimplified and just inaccurate based on our current neuroscience understanding. Stumbling upon Lisa Feldman Barrett's work at the same time was incredibly helpful. Her interview on Ginger Campbell's Brain Science Podcast connected a lot of dots for me. Understanding degeneracy further helped me move away from anatomical-bound explanations for complex human behavior.
The result of all the study bore fruit in how I created the Resilience Toolkit. I realized the importance of a model is how it helps people understand their experience, the relevance to their lives and ecology, and to guide them in learning, healing, and moving forward. As I facilitate the Toolkit, part of my work is to select from the various stress/trauma/resilience models based on what a particular audience needs. There is no perfect model. There are gaps and biases. Yet, there is often enough in a particular model or two that can be really helpful in a practical sense for people to grasp and make their own.
As we train Toolkit facilitators, we pick up these various stress/trauma/resilience models (polyvagal, allostasis, ethology, triune, social ecology, GAS, etc) and examine their origins, biases, strengths, gaps. Sometimes students struggle as they want to know which one is the "right" one. It is in learning about and alongside the people we work with, that we are able to select the model that will be the most resonant.