Until now, the development of effective therapies for the treatment of functional disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) has been thwarted by a general lack of knowledge about how events in the intestine are detected by visceral afferent neurones.

There are considerable gaps in our knowledge of the anatomy as well as the function and modulation of visceral afferent projections, in particular about what causes visceral hypersensitivity or abnormal sensory perception of stimuli in the gut. The field is advancing …