Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Placebo improves pleasure and pain through opposite modulation of sensory processing.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of neural systems underlying placebo analgesia from individual participant fMRI data.Nature communications · 2021Pooled it
- Defining pleasant touch stimuli: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological research · 2021Pooled it
- Assessment of Anhedonia in Adults With and Without Mental Illness: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.JAMA network open · 2020Pooled it
- Placebo Effects on the Neurologic Pain Signature: A Meta-analysis of Individual Participant Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data.JAMA neurology · 2018Pooled it
- ALE meta-analysis reveals dissociable networks for affective and discriminative aspects of touch.Human brain mapping · 2016Pooled it
- Acute placebo responsiveness predicts longitudinal expectation effects in antidepressant treatment.Translational psychiatry · 2026Trial
- Predictive biomarkers of placebo response in patients with cancer: an exploratory analysis of the ABCD randomized clinical trial.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2026Trial
- Effects of opioid receptor stimulation and blockade on touch pleasantness: a double-blind randomised trial.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2019Trial
- Effects and Components of Placebos with a Psychological Treatment Rationale - Three Randomized-Controlled Studies.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- Placebo treatment facilitates social trust and approach behavior.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Trial
- Frontal-Brainstem Pathways Mediating Placebo Effects on Social Rejection.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2017Trial
- Association Between Placebo-Activated Neural Systems and Antidepressant Responses: Neurochemistry of Placebo Effects in Major Depression.JAMA psychiatry · 2015Trial
- Placebo analgesia and its opioidergic regulation suggest that empathy for pain is grounded in self pain.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015Trial
- Unlearning chronic pain: A randomized controlled trial to investigate changes in intrinsic brain connectivity following Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2014Trial
- Rethinking coping in chronic pain: a systematic review and dynamic interaction model of coping.Pain reports · 2026Review
- An Ecologically Valid Experimental Model for Repeated Evoked Pain Using a Wearable Device in Pain-Free Individuals: A Pilot Feasibility Study.Pain research & management · 2026Article
- Placebo treatment entails resource-dependent downregulation of negative inputs.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Somatosensory modulation of affective pictures' processing in adults with cerebral palsy and healthy controls: a case-control study.BMC neurology · 2025Article
- Beyond Needling: Integrating a Bayesian Brain Model into Acupuncture Treatment.Brain sciences · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Placebo analgesia is often conceptualized as a reward mechanism. However, by targeting only negative experiences, such as pain, placebo research may tell only half the story. We compared placebo improvement of painful touch (analgesia) with placebo improvement of pleasant touch (hyperhedonia) using functional MRI and a crossover design. Somatosensory processing was decreased during placebo analgesia and increased during placebo hyperhedonia. Both placebo responses were associated with similar patterns of activation increase in circuitry involved in emotion appraisal, including the pregenual anterior cingulate, medial orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, accumbens, and midbrain structures. Importantly, placebo-induced coupling between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and periaqueductal gray correlated with somatosensory decreases to painful touch and somatosensory increases to pleasant touch. These findings suggest that placebo analgesia and hyperhedonia are mediated by activation of shared emotion appraisal neurocircuitry, which down- or up-regulates early sensory processing, depending on whether the expectation is reduced pain or increased pleasure.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.