Pain is highly modifiable by psychological factors, including expectations. However, pain is a complex phenomenon, and expectations may work by influencing any number of processes that underlie the construction of pain. Neuroimaging has begun to provide a window into these brain processes, and how expectations influence them. In this article, we review findings regarding expectancy effects on b...

Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF; formerly 'electromagetic hypersensitivity') is a medically unexplained illness in which subjective symptoms are reported following exposure to electrical devices. In an earlier systematic review, we reported data from 31 blind provocation studies which had exposed IEI-EMF volunteers to active or sham electromagn...

There is limited information available on the evaluation of placebo or nocebo effects itch. The present study developed a search strategy using PubMed to evaluate literature related and/or identified 65 articles. After independent review each article, 10 studies were selected for inclusion. These varied, in terms methods and outcome measures. Overall, verbal suggestion, conditioning, topical th...

BACKGROUND Experimental studies suggest that nocebo responses might occur after exposure to equipment emitting electromagnetic fields such as high voltage power lines (HVPLs) or mobile phone base stations. OBJECTIVES The present study investigates to what extent health responses to a new HVPL can be explained by beliefs of residents regarding the health effects of HVPLs. METHODS We used a q...