Previous research in social neuroscience has consistently shown that empathy for pain recruits brain areas that are also activated during the first-hand experience of pain. This has been interpreted as evidence that empathy relies upon neural processes similar to those underpinning the first-hand experience of emotions. However, whether such overlapping neural activations imply that equivalent ...

FREE Full Text 6. ↵ Andrews G (2001) Placebo response in depression: bane of research, boon to therapy. Br J Psychiatry 178: 192-194. FREE Full Text 7. ↵ Apkarian AV, Sosa Y, Sonty S, Levy RM, Harden RN, Parrish TB, Gitelman DR (2004) Chronic back pain is associated with decreased prefrontal and thalamic gray matter density. J Neurosci 24: 10410-10415. Abstract/FREE Full Text 8. ↵ Bao S, Chan V...

Empathy for pain activates brain areas partially overlapping with those underpinning the first-hand experience of pain. It remains unclear, however, whether such shared activations imply that pain empathy engages similar neural functions as first-hand pain experiences. To overcome the limitations of previous neuroimaging research, we pursued a conceptually novel approach: we used the phenomenon...

Gender differences in human cardiovascular norepinephrine transporter function may be mediated through female sex hormones. We studied 16 healthy eumenorrheic women (25+/-1 years) during the early follicular phase (day 5+/-0) and midluteal phase (day 22+/-0) of the menstrual cycle. In a randomized, crossover, double-blind fashion, subjects ingested 8 mg of the selective norepinephrine transport...

Expectation and conditioning are supposed to be the two main psychological mechanisms for inducing a placebo response. Here, we further investigate the effects of both expectation, which was induced by verbal suggestion alone, and conditioning at the level of N1 and N2-P2 components of CO2 laser-evoked potentials (LEPs) and subjective pain reports. Forty-four healthy volunteers were pseudorando...

Quality of life (QoL) has become an accepted and widely used endpoint in clinical trials. The analytical tools used for QoL evaluations in clinical trials differ from those used for the more traditional endpoints, such as response to disease, overall survival or progression-free survival. Since QoL assessments are generally performed on self-administered questionnaires, QoL endpoints are more p...

BACKGROUND It is clearly established that emotional events tend to be remembered particularly vividly. The neurobiological substrates of this phenomenon are poorly understood. Recently, the noradrenergic system has been implicated in that beta blockade has been shown to reduce significantly the delayed recall of emotional material with matched neutral material being unaffected. METHODS In the...

Figure 1. Ischemic ulceration and necrosis of left middle finger. DESCRIPTION A 35-year-old man presented with a 3-year history of episodic fingertip pain with associated discoloration triggered by cold exposure. His job required activities in a subzero walk-in freezer, which exacerbated pain and discoloration. The middle fingertip wound began spontaneously 3 months prior and worsened despite m...