Psychophysiology of visceral pain

Abstract

This paper reviews the most important research strategies in the context of the psychophysiology of visceral pain. These are disturbed gastrointestinal motility, visceral hypersensitivity and central nervous system mechanisms such as response bias, attentional bias and affective evaluation. The most prominent research methods and results are reviewed and methodological problems are discussed. From a psychophysiological perspective, visceral pain remains a complex and heterogeneous syndrome in which stress and coping may be etiologically as important as pathophysiological mechanisms of peripheral origin and central nervous system mechanisms like attentional bias.