This Perspective reviews recent findings in placebo hypoalgesia and provides a conceptual
account of how expectations and experience can lead to placebo hypoalgesia. In particular�…

Recent studies have identified brain correlates of placebo analgesia, but none have
assessed how accurately patterns of brain activity can predict individual differences in�…

Placebo treatments are pharmacologically inert, but are known to alleviate symptoms across
a variety of clinical conditions. Associative learning and cognitive expectations both play�…

The placebo effect is a component of any response to a treatment (effective or inert), but we
still ignore why it exists. We propose that placebo analgesia is a facet of pain perception�…

We investigated the mechanisms underlying the activation of endogenous opioids in
placebo analgesia by using the model of human experimental ischemic arm pain. Different�…

In placebo hypoalgesia research, the strength of treatment expectations and experiences
are key components. However, the reliability or precision of expectations had been mostly�…

Behavioral studies have suggested that placebo analgesia is partly mediated by the
endogenous opioid system. Expanding on these results we have shown that the opioid�…

Placebo analgesia is one of the most robust and best-studied placebo effects. With the help
of brain imaging tools, such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic�…

In this issue of Pain, Vase et al. provide evidence for some of the largest placebo effects yet
reported in an experimental study. Testing patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), they�…

Expectations, positive or negative, are modulating factors influencing behavior. They are
also thought to underlie placebo effects, potentially impacting perceptions and biological�…