Anatomy, physiology, and evaluation: Bowel, bladder, and sexual disorders

Our present understanding of bowel and bladder control has changed dramatically with the introduction of functional imagining technologies such as PET, SPECT, fMRI scanning, and near-infrared spectroscopy of the brain. Urologists tend to see control of urination and defecation as processes that occurred at or below the level of the pons for the most part. In this chapter, we examine the control of storing and emptying of urine and stool from what will be a more neurocentric perspective, integrating the frontal lobes into the process and moving beyond the pons on which most of the literature has focused in the past. Utilizing this approach gives us a better understanding of why there is an overlapping of neuropsychiatric problems in many patients with voiding dysfunction.