Now out @NatureComms! https://t.co/5AHORDIlLJ With @bogpetre (co-first) @torwager @Na_Friedman @fMRIstats @martaceko we show with fMRI & N=392 that placebo analgesia is driven by changes in brain systems related to affective & cognitive processes, not nociceptive pain processing

And alongside that: we examined how expectations are formed from multi-value social cues, and how they shape both pain and visual perception. Integrating behavior, neuroimaging, and computational modeling.

Read this #openaccess #PapersoftheWeek pick from @rotembot et al. and @NatureComms about placebo treatment’s effect on brain systems related to affective and cognitive processes, as well as its lack of evident effect on nociceptive pain https://t.co/be3vaGoSgk #PRF

Read this #openaccess #PapersoftheWeek pick from @rotembot et al. and @NatureComms about placebo treatment’s effect on brain systems related to affective and cognitive processes, as well as its lack of evident effect on nociceptive pain https://t.co/WXKTUJ1cme #PRF

@NatureComms @bogpetre @torwager @Na_Friedman @fMRIstats @martaceko corrected link to the paper:

The #Dartmouth Brain Imaging Center and Cluster on the #Neural Code are expanding! We have openings for permanent, high-level research staff positions: - DBIC Staff #fMRI #physicist - Neural Code Cluster Research Scientist/Research Asst Prof Please RT, and find me at OHBM!

🚨WP🚨 Conspiracy beliefs famously resist correction, right? WRONG: We show brief convos w GPT4 reduce conspiracy beliefs by ~20pp (d~1)! 🡆Tailored AI evidence rebut specific arguments offered by believers 🡆Effect lasts 2+mo 🡆Works on entrenched beliefs https://t.co/4VI0mzRqD9

It was a pleasure talking with @fMRI_today about analytical variability #narps https://t.co/mQ9j8ZHanG, promoting open & reproducible science ( https://t.co/o0XcwCRyPG; https://t.co/jXqMOxpmxx; https://t.co/nOrjh2GXqn), placebo effects https://t.co/PHexnHYyJ3, #OHBM, & much more!

Excited to share our commentary led by the brilliant @JWeinrova (@notts_psych)!

** I am hiring a research assistant! ** Interested in mind-body treatments for chronic pain? Brain imaging studies of pain and emotion? Statistical methods and AI? Come join our team in beautiful Denver Colorado! Now accepting applications: https://t.co/N7oyMtqdmv please RT

After 5 years of collecting data on this project--the largest placebo neuroimaging study to date--it's wonderful to be able to take fMRI correlates of placebo analgesia to the next level of scale!

Seeing chronic back pain as due to the mind or brain can help heal it. Check out our paper published today in JAMA Network Open, using natural language methods to study patients' **pain attributions** https://t.co/v4519JHXKb Tweet thread: 1/n

individual differences, surprising reversed neural placebo-induced responses in the transfer condition, and more. As always, data and code are publicly shared, take a look and use them @openscience! Data @OpenNeuroOrg https://t.co/Fw1wZ1ZjAX, code https://t.co/VY76SSa4qz (end)

placebos mainly operate via higher-level processes, and transfer between pain modalities. These findings open new directions for how to harness placebo effects and placebo-like processes to improve clinical care. Read our preprint for more https://t.co/PHexnHYyJ3, including (10)

Decreased activity in a second validated a priori neuromarker, the Stimulus Intensity Independent Pain Signature (SIIPS), along with several pre-registered higher-level brain regions inc. prefrontal and striatal regions. This means that, at least in experimental settings, (9)

In fact, Bayes Factor analyses provided strong evidence in favor of the null hypothesis of no placebo effect in these regions and signature. Instead of modulation of low-level perceptual processes, we found modulation of higher-level processes: (8)

(because thermal and mechanical pain diverge in early channels). But what about the brain? The placebo treatment didn't decrease activity in the Neurologic Pain Signature (NPS), the most validated nociceptive pain neuromarker, and in a series of preregistered nociceptive ROIs (7)

Participants were conditioned with the creams and thermal painful stimuli, but the placebo effect also transferred to a second, unconditioned pain modality- mechanical (and was as strong in this transfer condition!), suggesting involvement of higher-level processes (6)

First, the placebo manipulation (inc. suggestion & conditioning) worked well: Participants reported less pain when they believed they were treated with an analgesic vs. a control cream (although both creams were in fact identical!) (5)

small samples, and meta-analyses showed that these effects are often small. So, we revisited this fundamental question with a combination of the largest placebo fMRI sample to date (N=392!), pre-registered analyses, and validated fMRI-based multivariate neuromarkers for pain. (4)