ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2023
Function and biochemistry of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during placebo analgesia: how the certainty of prior experiences shapes endogenous pain relief.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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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.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Meta-analytic evidence for distinct neural correlates of conditioned versus verbally induced placebo analgesia.Nature communications · 2026Pooled it
- The Human Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Pain and Pain Modulation: A Review and Activation-Likelihood Estimation Approach.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Pooled it
- Functional brain alterations associated with acupuncture for chronic pain: a scoping review of fMRI studies.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Pooled it
- Cerebellar tDCS and pain modulation: a critical integrative and systematic review.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Pooled it
- Effect of acupuncture treatment for patients with knee osteoarthritis on brain fluctuation amplitude and functional connectivity: a randomized three-armed fMRI study.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2025Trial
- Effects of prefrontal transcranial direct current stimulation on open-label placebo responses.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Placebo analgesia persistence: evaluating behavioural stability in repeated trials.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Conditioned Pain Modulation, Placebo and Offset Analgesia: Rates of Behavioural Expression of Inhibitory, Nonresponse and Facilitatory Pain Modulatory Effects.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2025Article
- Direct comparisons of neural activity during placebo analgesia and nocebo hyperalgesia between humans and rats.Communications biology · 2025Article
- The Placebo Hypoalgesic Response Is Reduced in Healthy Older Adults Showing a Decline in Executive Functioning.Journal of pain research · 2025Article
- Near-infrared spectroscopic study of blood flow changes in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during pain relief by odor stimulation.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Re-examining the Mysterious Role of the Cerebellum in Pain.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Prior experiences, conditioning cues, and expectations of improvement are essential for placebo analgesia expression. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is considered a key region for converting these factors into placebo responses. Since dorsolateral prefrontal cortex neuromodulation can attenuate or amplify placebo, we sought to investigate dorsolateral prefrontal cortex biochemistry and function in 38 healthy individuals during placebo analgesia. After conditioning participants to expect pain relief from a placebo "lidocaine" cream, we collected baseline magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) at 7 Tesla over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Following this, functional magnetic resonance imaging scans were collected during which identical noxious heat stimuli were delivered to the control and placebo-treated forearm sites. There was no significant difference in the concentration of gamma-aminobutyric acid, glutamate, Myo-inositol, or N-acetylaspartate at the level of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex between placebo responders and nonresponders. However, we identified a significant inverse relationship between the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate and pain rating variability during conditioning. Moreover, we found placebo-related activation within the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and altered functional magnetic resonance imaging coupling between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the midbrain periaqueductal gray, which also correlated with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex glutamate. These data suggest that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex formulates stimulus-response relationships during conditioning, which are then translated to altered cortico-brainstem functional relationships and placebo analgesia expression.
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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.