ReviewProgress in neurobiology2018
Mechanisms of placebo analgesia: A dual-process model informed by insights from cross-species comparisons.
Review in Progress in neurobiology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
32 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Combining various acupuncture therapies with multimodal analgesia to enhance postoperative pain management following total knee arthroplasty: a network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Pooled it
- Trial
- The pain alarm response - an example of how conscious awareness shapes pain perception.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- Top-down control of the descending pain modulatory system drives multimodal placebo analgesia.Neuron · 2026Article
- Placebo analgesia persistence: evaluating behavioural stability in repeated trials.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Mirror Neurons and Pain: A Scoping Review of Experimental, Social, and Clinical Evidence.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Placebo effect on brainstem activity associated with capsaicin-evoked urge to cough in healthy humans.The European respiratory journal · 2026Article
- Direct comparisons of neural activity during placebo analgesia and nocebo hyperalgesia between humans and rats.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Opioidergic activation of the descending pain inhibitory system underlies placebo analgesia.Science advances · 2025Article
- Convergent state-control of endogenous opioid analgesia.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Placebo treatment affects brain systems related to affective and cognitive processes, but not nociceptive pain.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Neurocircuitry basis of motor cortex-related analgesia as an emerging approach for chronic pain management.Nature. Mental health · 2024Article
- Does pain hurt more in Spanish? The neurobiology of pain among Spanish-English bilingual adults.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Article
- Article
- Stimulus-independent and stimulus-dependent neural networks underpin placebo analgesia responsiveness in humans.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Sex differences in morphine sensitivity are associated with differential glial expression in the brainstem of rats with neuropathic pain.Journal of neuroscience research · 2022Article
- Toward Composite Pain Biomarkers of Neuropathic Pain-Focus on Peripheral Neuropathic Pain.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Brainstem Mechanisms of Pain Modulation: A within-Subjects 7T fMRI Study of Placebo Analgesic and Nocebo Hyperalgesic Responses.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- The brain's structural differences between postherpetic neuralgia and lower back pain.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Different brain networks mediate the effects of social and conditioned expectations on pain.Nature communications · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Placebo treatments are pharmacologically inert, but are known to alleviate symptoms across a variety of clinical conditions. Associative learning and cognitive expectations both play important roles in placebo responses, however we are just beginning to understand how interactions between these processes lead to powerful effects. Here, we review the psychological principles underlying placebo effects and our current understanding of their brain bases, focusing on studies demonstrating both the importance of cognitive expectations and those that demonstrate expectancy-independent associative learning. To account for both forms of placebo analgesia, we propose a dual-process model in which flexible, contextually driven cognitive schemas and attributions guide associative learning processes that produce stable, long-term placebo effects. According to this model, the placebo-induction paradigms with the most powerful effects are those that combine reinforcement (e.g., the experience of reduced pain after placebo treatment) with suggestions and context cues that disambiguate learning by attributing perceived benefit to the placebo. Using this model as a conceptual scaffold, we review and compare neurobiological systems identified in both human studies of placebo analgesia and behavioral pain modulation in rodents. We identify substantial overlap between the circuits involved in human placebo analgesia and those that mediate multiple forms of context-based modulation of pain behavior in rodents, including forebrain-brainstem pathways and opioid and cannabinoid systems in particular. This overlap suggests that placebo effects are part of a set of adaptive mechanisms for shaping nociceptive signaling based on its information value and anticipated optimal response in a given behavioral context.
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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.