Placebos in Healthcare: A Behavioral Study on How Treatment Responsiveness Affects Therapy Decisions in a Simulated Patient-Physician Interaction.

Background And Purpose: Treatment choice during clinical practice is crucial to best help each patient. One of the physicians' main goals is choosing a personalized effective treatment, but it also represents a challenging issue. Here, we explored different treatment choices in a simulated patient-physician interaction.

Visual placebo and nocebo effects.

Placebo and nocebo effects modulate symptom perception through expectations and learning processes in various domains. Predominantly, their impact has been investigated on pain and physical performance. However, the influence of placebos and nocebos on visual system functionality has yet to be explored.

The impact of patients' pre-treatment expectations on immunosuppressive treatment outcomes in myasthenia gravis: A pilot correlational study.

Introduction/aims: The impact of treatment expectations on active treatment outcomes has not been specifically investigated in neuromuscular disorders. We thus explored in myasthenia gravis (MG) the contribution of patients' pre-treatment expectations combined with an immunosuppressant drug on treatment outcomes.

Methods: This pilot correlational study involved 17 patients with generalized MG, scheduled to start immunosuppressant azathioprine.

Mind and body connection in expert meditators: a computational study based on central and peripheral nervous system.

A meditative 'technique' is conceived as a continuum of different affective states involving mind and body jointly. Meditative practices can involve cognitive effort (e.g.

Are eco-sustainable dietary patterns associated with impulsiveness? An insight from Italy.

Impulsivity is known to influence food choices. We explored possible differences in its expression between individuals with or without an eco-sustainable diet and its relationship with cognitions and behaviours about eco-sustainable foods. Participants were categorised as having or not having an eco-sustainable diet.

Modulation of Motor Awareness: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study in the Healthy Brain.

Previous studies on the mechanisms underlying willed actions reported that the premotor cortex may be involved in the construction of motor awareness. However, its exact role is still under investigation. Here, we investigated the role of the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) in motor awareness by modulating its activity applying inhibitory rTMS to PMd, before a specific motor awareness task (under three conditions: without stimulation, after rTMS and after Sham stimulation).

Pain expectation and avoidance in the social context: an electrophysiological study.

Contingent negative variation (CNV) is an informative electrophysiological measure of pain anticipation showing higher amplitudes when highly painful stimulation is expected while presenting lower amplitudes when low painful stimulation is expected. Two groups of participants were recruited: one group expected and received an electrical stimulation of different intensities while being alone in the room (i.e.

Attempting to Separate Placebo Effects from Exercise in Chronic Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background: Pain is the most disabling characteristic of musculoskeletal disorders, and while exercise is promoted as an important treatment modality for chronic musculoskeletal conditions, the relative contribution of the specific effects of exercise training, placebo effects and non-specific effects such as natural history are not clear. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to determine the relative contribution of these factors to better understand the true effect of exercise training for reducing pain in chronic primary musculoskeletal pain conditions.

Design: Systematic review with meta-analysis DATA SOURCES: MEDLINE, CINAHL, SPORTDiscus, EMBASE and CENTRAL from inception to February 2021.

The Effect of Temporal Information on Placebo Analgesia and Nocebo Hyperalgesia.

Objective: Expectations are known to be key determinants of placebo and nocebo phenomena. In previous studies, verbal suggestions to induce such expectations have mainly focused on the direction and magnitude of the effect, whereas little is known about the influence of temporal information.

Methods: Using an experimental placebo and nocebo design, we investigated whether information about the expected onset of a treatment effect modulates the start and time course of analgesic and hyperalgesic responses.

The placebo effect in breath holding: a preliminary behavioral investigation.

Purpose: This study seeks to evaluate effects of expectations and conditioning on dry breath holding.

Methods: Sixty healthy volunteers were subdivided into 3 groups and were tested across 4 breath holding trials. Participants of the Control group (C) did not undergo any manipulation.

I expect what you expect: An electrophysiological study on social expectation of pain.

Expectations and motor reactions related to pain are mainly acquired through personal experiences. Contingent negative variation (CNV) has been shown to be an informative electrophysiological measure of this pain anticipation. Expectations can also arise while observing others in painful conditions.

The neurobiological underpinnings of placebo and nocebo effects.

The placebo effect, once considered only a nuisance in clinical research, is today a target of scientific inquiry that allows us understand how words, rituals and, more in general, the whole psychosocial context around the patient, affect the response to a treatment and the course of a disease. Today we are in a good position to study all these complex psychological factors by using a physiological and neuroscientific approach that uses modern neurobiological tools to probe different brain functions. Since a placebo is represented by the whole ritual of the therapeutic act, the main concept that has emerged today is that words and rituals may modulate the same biochemical pathways that are modulated by drugs.

Verbal communication about drug dosage balances drug reduction in Parkinson's disease: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidences.

Introduction: Changing drug dosage is common in clinical practice. Recent evidence showed that psychological factors may affect the therapeutic outcome. The aim of this study is to test whether verbal communication about drug dosage changes motor performance and fatigue in Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients.

Dissociation between executed and imagined bimanual movements in autism spectrum conditions.

Unlabelled: Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are characterized by social-communicative deficits and repetitive stereotyped behaviors. Altered motor coordination is also observed and a dysfunction of motor imagery has been recently reported on implicit tasks. However, no information on explicit motor imagery abilities is available in ASC.

Placebo effects: From pain to motor performance.

The placebo effect can be elicited by two main mechanisms: via classical conditioning and cognitive expectations. These two mechanisms have been traditionally investigated in one single domain. The aim of the present study is to investigate how a placebo effect obtained in one modality (pain tolerance) can be transferred to another modality (motor endurance) and which mechanisms (i.

Cognitive and Neurophysiological Effects of Non-invasive Brain Stimulation in Stroke Patients after Motor Rehabilitation.

The primary aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of two specific Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation (NIBS) paradigms, the repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS), and transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), in the upper limb rehabilitation of patients with stroke. Short and long term outcomes (after 3 and 6 months, respectively) were evaluated. We measured, at multiple time points, the manual dexterity using a validated clinical scale (ARAT), electroencephalography auditory event related potentials, and neuropsychological performances in patients with chronic stroke of middle severity.

Increasing uncertainty in CNS clinical trials: the role of placebo, nocebo, and Hawthorne effects.

As modern research continues to unravel the details of the placebo phenomenon in CNS disorders, uncertainty about therapeutic outcomes in trials of treatments for several neurological conditions is growing. Advances in understanding the mechanisms of different placebo effects have emphasised the substantial challenges inherent in interpreting the results of CNS clinical trials. In the past few years, new mechanisms and concepts have emerged in the study of placebo, nocebo, and Hawthorne effects in CNS clinical trials.

Abnormal Sense of Agency in Patients with Schizophrenia: Evidence from Bimanual Coupling Paradigm.

A fruitful approach to the understanding the human awareness of action is the study of those pathologies in which some aspects of it are altered. Previous evidences showed that patients with schizophrenia tend to attribute someone else' actions to their own, as internally, rather than externally, generated. Here, we asked whether schizophrenics have an "excessive" sense of agency, while observing others' movements.

From intention to perception: The case of anosognosia for hemiplegia.

Brain-damaged patients with anosognosia for hemiplegia deny their motor deficit and believe they can still move the paralyzed limb. Previous studies suggest that anosognosia can arise from intact motor intentionality and planning for the plegic hand. However, few studies focused on the relationship between this spared intentionality and perception.

The rehabilitative effects on written language of a combined language and parietal dual-tDCS treatment in a stroke case.

In this paper we report the effect of a combined transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and speech language therapy on linguistic deficits following left brain damage in a stroke case. We show that simultaneous electrical excitatory stimulation to the left and inhibitory stimulation to the right parietal regions (dual-tDCS) affected writing and reading rehabilitation, enhancing speech therapy outcomes. The results of a comparison with healthy controls showed that application of dual-tDCS could improve, in particular, sub-lexical transcoding and, specifically, the reading of non-words with increasing length and complexity.