Brain-gut interactions in the regulation of visceral pain perception and food intake

The importance of bidirectional brain-gut communication in the regulation and dysregulation of many vital functions in both health and disease is increasingly being recognized. This so-called brain-gut axis constitutes the core neurobiological substrate regulating normal digestive processes in health, including appetite and food intake, and in integrating these processes with the overall physical and emotional state of the body. Dysfunction at any level of the brain-gut axis may result in aberrant processing and, thus, perception of physiological as well as noxious interoceptive signals and is therefore believed to play a major role in the generation of chronic unexplained gastrointestinal symptoms such as visceral pain and disorders of food intake including obesity. Despite intense scrutiny, the pathophysiology of these disorders remains incompletely understood, and even in health there is still much ambiguity. This is mostly due to the fact that research on both visceral pain and food intake regulation is still hampered by dualism, with some authors focusing on the brain and others on the periphery.

The present doctoral project aimed to gain more insight into the mechanisms underlying processing and modulation of gut-brain signals in health as well as disorders of food intake. More specifically, we took an integrative approach to the study of visceral pain and food intake, combining several neurophysiological, psychological/behavioral and biochemical methods to investigate the interaction between central and peripheral mechanisms.