CENESTHESIA and CENESTHOPATHY. — By cenesthesia is meant the general internal sensitivity, i.e., that complex of impressions reaching consciousness from our internal world, from the viscera and from all the tissues of the body. This complex, if the general functioning of the tissues is good, manifests itself as a sense of well-being and good humor; but if there is a functional disturbance or a threat to the vitality of some organs more essential to life, such as the heart, then consciousness perceives a more or less severe malaise, up to anxiety, distress, and anguish as of impending death. Cenesthopathies are syndromes of altered cenesthesia, which mostly originate in an alteration of nerve centers collecting internal sensations: thus in the medulla oblongata there exists a center of personal security, near to or identical with the bulbar center of the vagus nerve, which can be acutely irritated, e.g., by stimulation of the peripheral sensitive fibers of the vagus in the heart, lungs, stomach, peritoneum, or in the medulla itself; and then it manifests to the subject's consciousness as a terror of threatened life, a profound malaise. It is also known that other centers, especially located at the base of the brain, in the diencephalic region and the optic thalami, are responsible for normal cenesthesia and for the regulation of edema, the fundamental affective tone or mood of the subject. And today the seat of dysthymias (v.) is being sought in the basal region of the brain, of which cenesthopathies are like the fundamental alterations.
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