Nocebo-induced modulation of cerebral itch processing - An fMRI study.

It has been shown repeatedly that perceiving itch-related pictures or listening to a lecture on itch can enhance itch sensation and scratching behaviour (Niemeier and Gieler, 2000; Holle et al., 2012; Lloyd et al., 2013), indicating that itch is strongly influenced by expectations.

BOLD responses to itch in the human spinal cord.

Itch is an independent sensory modality and a very common symptom with manifold causes. However, the neuronal representation of itch perception in the central nervous system is not entirely understood and there is hardly any knowledge about neuronal correlates of itch in the human spinal cord. In the present study we aimed to identify itch-related neural activity in the cervical spinal cord in healthy volunteers employing high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).