nausea

views updated

nausea The unpleasant sensation vaguely located in the upper abdomen and chest which heralds vomiting or fainting, but which may also occur without dramatic issue. Nausea is well known to accompany strong negative emotion — disgust, fear, horror — or severe pain; also a side-effect of some drugs and of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and a feature of a variety of gastro–intestinal and other diseases. Its physical basis is the autonomic nervous system and the associated visceral afferents (nerves bringing in information from the gut); there may be nervous inputs from a diseased or insulted stomach or intestine, with appropriate reflex responses, or the system may be activated ‘inappropriately’ from higher regions of the brain.

Stuart Judge


See visceral sensation; vomiting.

More From encyclopedia.com