Preface

In 2014, a number of scientists working on the Enteric Nervous System (ENS) and Visceral Pain gathered in Adelaide to discuss the advances and future of their research. That meeting was very successful and involved all the leading researchers in the feld of enteric neuroscience from across the world. The proceedings of the meeting were published by Springer in a very successful book The Enteric Nervous System 30 Years Later, edited by Drs Marcello Costa and Stuart Brierley.

Six years later, as part of the International Federation of Neurogastroenterology and Motility (FNM) meeting to be held in Adelaide on March 25–29th 2020, a special satellite on “Visceral Pain and the Gut-Brain axis” was planned. This satellite was timely as these topics represented one of the most rapidly advancing fields of science, including the gut-brain axis and mechanisms involving how the microbiome communicates with the brain. However, both FNM2020 and the satellite meeting were postponed by one year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the extraordinary conditions, these international conferences were conducted one year later (April 2021) when international borders to and from Australia remained shut. Determined to go ahead with these meetings, all overseas speakers pre-recorded talks, and participants could access the talks and ask questions via an online portal...