Neuropsychological concepts of somatoform disorders

Clinical descriptions of somatoform disorders tend to fall largely into the two main categories of conversion disorder and hypochondriasis. These disorders frequently occur in the context of other psychopathology and also tend to have a significant association with CNS disease. Evidence implicating alterations in brainstem reticular arousal and attentional mechanisms in the etiology of these disorders is reviewed. Relevant studies investigating cerebral asymmetry of function have tended to associate right hemisphere information processing style with the sensory, attentional and affective changes that characterize conversion disorders. It is suggested that brain research in the field of somatoform disorders look to the second somatosensory area (SII), which appears to be especially suited to the types of neurophysiological and neuropsychological dynamics that are generally presumed to underlie this class of maladies. Finally, it is argued that a biopsychosocial approach to the understanding of somatoform disorders requires the incorporation of neuropsychological data into a multidimensional conceptual framework.