Placebo and Nocebo Effects Across Symptoms: From Pain to Fatigue, Dyspnea, Nausea, and Itch

Induction of nocebo and placebo effects on itch and pain by verbal suggestions.

Physical complaints, such as pain, can be effectively reduced by placebo effects through induction of positive expectations, or increased by nocebo effects through induction of negative expectations. In the present study, verbally induced nocebo and placebo effects on itch were experimentally investigated for the first time. In part 1, the role of verbal suggestions in inducing nocebo effects o...

Role of Conditioning and Verbal Suggestion in Placebo and Nocebo Effects on Itch

Placebo and nocebo effects are known to play a key role in treatment effects in a wide variety of conditions. These effects have frequently been investigated with regard to pain and also in other physical sensations, but have hardly been investigated with regard to itch. In addition, neither in pain nor in any other physical sensation, the single and combined contribution of the expectancy mech...

Pain, placebo, and nocebo: epistemic, ethical, and practical issues.

Pharmacologic management of cancer-related pain, dyspnea, and nausea.

Patients with cancer often face significant distress from their symptoms, especially near the end of life. However, prompt palliation of these symptoms can be complex since symptoms may occur in clusters, may be cancer- or treatment-related, and frequently require a multidisciplinary approach to management and a combination of therapeutic regimens. While evidence for many conventional symptom t...

Nonconscious activation of placebo and nocebo pain responses.

The dominant theories of human placebo effects rely on a notion that consciously perceptible cues, such as verbal information or distinct stimuli in classical conditioning, provide signals that activate placebo effects. However, growing evidence suggest that behavior can be triggered by stimuli presented outside of conscious awareness. Here, we performed two experiments in which the responses t...