CENESTHESIA AND CENESTOPATHY. - By cenesthesia is meant general internal sensibility, that is, that complex of impressions which reach consciousness from our internal world, from the viscera and from all the tissues of the body — a complex which, if the general functioning of the tissues is good, manifests itself as a sense of well-being and good humor, and, if there exists a poor functioning or an imbalance or a threat to the vitality of certain organs more essential for life, such as the heart, then consciousness perceives a malaise more or less severe, up to anxiety, to distress, to anguish as of imminent death. Cenesthopathies are syndromes of altered cenesthesia, which for the most part originate in an alteration of the nervous centers that collect the internal senses: thus in the medulla oblongata there exists a center of personal security, close to or identical with the bulbar center of the vagus, which can be acutely irritated, for example, by a stimulation of the peripheral sensory fibers of the vagus in the heart, in the lungs, in the stomach, in the peritoneum, or in the medulla itself; and then there manifests itself to the subject's consciousness as a terror of threatened life, a profound malaise. It is also known that other centers, especially situated at the base of the brain, in the diencephalic region and in that of the optic thalami, are responsible for normal cenesthesia, for the regulation of estimia, of the fundamental affective tone or mood of the subject. And today the seat of the dysthymias (v.) is sought in the basal region of the brain, of which the cenesthopathies are, as it were, the fundamental alterations.
Nicola Pende