Enteric Neurobiology: Discoveries and Directions.

Discovery and documentation of noncholinergic-nonadrenergic neurotransmission in the enteric nervous system started a revolution in mechanisms of neural control of the digestive tract that continues into a twenty-first century era of translational gastroenterology, which is now firmly embedded in the term, neurogastroenterology. This chapter, on Enteric Neurobiology: Discoveries and Directions, tracks the step-by-step advances in enteric neuronal electrophysiology and synaptic behavior and progresses to the higher order functions of central pattern generators, hard wired synaptic circuits and libraries of neural programs in the brain-in-the-gut that underlie the several different patterns of motility and secretory behaviors that occur in the specialized, serially-connected compartments extending from the esophagus to the anus.