Med Student Medical News about Analgesia Placebo Effect Cerebral Cortex

Become a Member Today!
Register

Most Viewed Abstracts

1. Report Shows Shift in Starting Salaries for Physicians

2. Recommendations on the use of 18F-FDG PET in oncology

3. Use of Antiemetic Agents in Acute Gastroenteritis

4. Gene expression signatures, clinicopathological features, and individualized therapy in breast cancer

5. AHA Guidelines on Cardiac CT for Assessing Coronary Artery Disease

Your Article Summary

See Latest Articles

(Click the title below to leave the MDLinx Network and go to the Journal's Website)

Prefrontal cortex modulates placebo analgesia
Pain, 11/02/09

Krummenacher P et al. – Expectations and beliefs modulate the experience of pain, which is particularly evident in placebo analgesia. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has been associated with pain regulation and with the generation, maintenance and manipulation of cognitive representations, consistent with its role in expectation. In a heat–pain paradigm, the authors employed non–invasive low–frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to transiently disrupt left and right DLPFC function or used the TMS device itself as a placebo, before applying an expectation–induced placebo analgesia. The results demonstrated that placebo significantly increased pain threshold and pain tolerance. While rTMS did not affect pain experience, it completely blocked placebo analgesia. These findings suggest that expectation–induced placebo analgesia is mediated by symmetric prefrontal cortex function.