Assessment of gut-brain interactions: reframing DGBI symptoms from visceral hypersensitivity to computational interoceptive overfitting
For decades, disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBI) have been ensnared in an epistemological bottleneck, clinically managed as diagnoses of exclusion despite the absence of structural pathology on conventional endoscopy. Traditional bottom-up models of visceral hypersensitivity fail to explain the profound subjective-objective symptom mismatches observed in clinical practice. This Perspective proposes a radical paradigm shift: leveraging the Predictive Processing (PP) framework to reconceptualize DGBI as a hierarchical computational dysfunction termed "interoceptive overfitting". We postulate that rigid, high-precision threat priors force the salience network (dACC and aIns) to misallocate pathologically high precision weighting to baseline physiological noise, such as healthy 3-cycles-per-minute (cpm) gastric slow waves. This top-down failure synthesizes illusory pain and triggers genuine autonomic disruption via active inference, creating a self-fulfilling loop of GI micro-sabotage. We present a clinical roadmap utilizing high-resolution body surface gastric mapping (BSGM) and Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) to identify "Probabilistic Mismatch Points" within a multimodal diagnostic matrix that accounts for non-rhythmic peripheral modulators. To resolve therapeutic stagnation, we propose closed-loop digital therapeutics (DTx) designed to recalibrate the brain's predictive engine through validation-correction loops, targeted extinction learning, and dual-stream telemetry. This computational framework provides a rigorously scientific blueprint to resolve therapeutic stagnation in DGBI.
Authors
- Dakai Zeng
- He Zeng
- Zi Lin
- Wen-Jing Yan
Institutions
- Wenzhou Medical University (CN)
- First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University (CN)
- Ruian People's Hospital (CN)
- Jinzhou Kangning Hospital (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Frontiers in Physiology
- Published
- 2026-04-15
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2026.1817832
- Primary Topic
- Gastrointestinal motility and disorders
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00