ArticleNeuron2023
Agency affects pain inference through prior shift as opposed to likelihood precision modulation in a Bayesian pain model.
Article in Neuron, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Dopamine has no direct causal role in the formation of treatment expectations and placebo analgesia in humans.PLoS biology · 2024Trial
- Placebo Effects Are Small on Average in the 7.5% CO2 Inhalational Model of Generalized Anxiety.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- Reward-induced endogenous pain inhibition scales with action-outcome certainty in humans.Pain · 2026Article
- Prediction, pain, and the power of context: toward a contemporary identity for the chiropractic profession.Chiropractic & manual therapies · 2026Review
- Brain rhythms of depression: A predictive processing perspective.Trends in neurosciences · 2026Review
- Uncontrollability of experimental pain decreases pain intensity and relief pleasantness ratings in a between-group design.Pain reports · 2026Article
- Temporal predictions shape somatosensory perception.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Social information creates self-fulfilling prophecies in judgments of pain, vicarious pain, and cognitive effort.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Controllability changes pain perception by increasing the precision of expectations.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Pain modulation by self-generated expectations.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Neuropsychological mechanisms of observational learning in human placebo effects.Psychopharmacology · 2025Review
- Pain Expectation Effects Are Predicted by Emotion Rather Than Precision.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- A computational mechanism of cue-stimulus integration for pain in the brain.Science advances · 2024Article
- Cue-based modulation of pain stimulus expectation: do ongoing oscillations reflect changes in pain perception? A registered report.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Agency and expectations play a crucial role in pain perception and treatment. In the Bayesian pain model, somatosensation (likelihood) and expectations (prior) are weighted by their precision and integrated to form a pain percept (posterior). Combining pain treatment with stimulus-related expectations allows the mechanistic assessment of whether agency enters this model as a shift of the prior or a relaxation of the likelihood precision. In two experiments, heat pain was sham treated either externally or by the subject, while a predictive cue was utilized to create high or low treatment expectations. Both experiments revealed additive effects and greater pain relief under self-treatment and high treatment expectations. Formal model comparisons favored a prior shift rather than a modulation of likelihood precision. Electroencephalography revealed a theta-to-alpha effect, temporally associated with expectations, which was correlated with trial-by-trial pain ratings, further supporting a prior shift through which agency exerts its influence in the Bayesian pain model.
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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.