ReviewCurrent pain and headache reports2014
Understanding placebo and nocebo responses for pain management.
Review in Current pain and headache reports, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 2 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
48 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The Influence of Placebo Effect on Craving and Cognitive Performance in Alcohol, Caffeine, or Nicotine Consumers: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2020Pooled it
- Placebo eff ects in psychiatry: mediators and moderators.The lancet. Psychiatry · 2015Pooled it
- Beware of What You Expect? A Partial Replication Study on the Behavioral and Psychophysiological Effects of Negative Expectations on Mechanical Hypersensitivity.Psychophysiology · 2026Trial
- Nocebo expectations rather than placebo expectations affect topical pain relief: A randomized clinical trial.Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy = Biomedecine & pharmacotherapie · 2024Trial
- Matching actual treatment with patient administration-route-preference improves analgesic response among acute low back pain patients-a randomized prospective trial.Journal of orthopaedic surgery and research · 2020Trial
- Influence of pain anticipation on brain activity and pain perception in Gulf War Veterans with chronic musculoskeletal pain.Psychophysiology · 2019Trial
- Effects of subtle cognitive manipulations on placebo analgesia - An implicit priming study.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2017Trial
- The effects of socioeconomic position on endogenous pain modulation: A quasi-experimental approach.The journal of pain · 2025Article
- Efficacy of photobiomodulation therapy in managing iatrogenic trigeminal nerve injury: A retrospective case series.Lasers in medical science · 2025Article
- An update on non-pharmacological interventions for pain relief.Cell reports. Medicine · 2025Review
- "The Dark Side of Musculoskeletal Care": Why Do Ineffective Techniques Seem to Work? A Comprehensive Review of Complementary and Alternative Therapies.Biomedicines · 2025Review
- Placebo and nocebo effect in pain.Handbook of clinical neurology · 2025Review
- Expectation of pain and relief: A dynamical model of the neural basis for pain-trauma co-morbidity.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Negative expectations (nocebo phenomenon) in clinical interventions: A scoping review.Journal of education and health promotion · 2024Article
- Multimodal non-invasive non-pharmacological therapies for chronic pain: mechanisms and progress.BMC medicine · 2023Review
- Experiences of Patients Taking Conditioned Open-Label Placebos for Reduction of Postoperative Pain and Opioid Exposure After Spine Surgery.International journal of behavioral medicine · 2023Article
- Article
- Young female participants show blunted placebo effects associated with blunted responses to a cue predicting a safe stimulus in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
- Can Residential Greenspace Exposure Improve Pain Experience? A Comparison between Physical Visit and Image Viewing.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- The placebo phenomenon and the underlying mechanisms.Hormones (Athens, Greece) · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Placebo analgesia makes individuals experience relief of their pain simply by virtue of the anticipation of a benefit. A reduction of pain can occur also when placebos follow the administration of active and effective painkillers. In fact, studies indicate that placebos mimic the action of active treatments and promote the endogenous release of opioids in both humans and animals. Finally, social support and observational learning also lead to analgesic effects. Thus, different psychological factors and situations induce expectations of analgesia facilitating the activation of the top-down systems for pain control along with the release of endogenous mediators crucially involved in placebo-induced benefits. Recent scientific investigation in the field of brain imaging is opening new avenues to understanding the cognitive mechanisms and neurobiological substrates of expectation-induced pain modulation. Gaining deeper knowledge of top-down mechanisms of pain modulation has enormous implications for personalizing and optimizing pain management.
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.