skip to content
Dovepress - Open Access to Scientific and Medical Research
View our mobile site

8852

Somatotopy of placebo analgesia is independent of spatial attention

Original Research

(1424) Views  (285) Full article downloads

Authors: Claudia Domnick, Jürgen Lorenz, Michael Hauck

Published Date March 2011 Volume 2011:4 Pages 79 - 83
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/JPR.S16610

Claudia Domnick1, Jürgen Lorenz2, Michael Hauck1,3
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany; 2Faculty of Life Sciences, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany; 3Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

Abstract: Placebo analgesia is being increasingly appraised as an effective support of pharmacological and surgical treatments of pain. The understanding of its neurobiological and psychological basis is therefore of high clinical relevance. It has been shown that placebo analgesia is somatotopically organized and relies on endogenous opioids. However, it is not clear whether temporal fluctuations of cue-dependent spatial attention account for the site specificity of placebo analgesia or whether a somatotopic placebo effect is possible without an attentional focus on the respective location. To address this issue we induced placebo expectations for one specific foot in healthy subjects, the other foot serving as a control location. The feet were stimulated in random order by painful laser stimuli. Half of the pulses were cued for stimulus location, whereas in the other half of trials the subjects were naïve about the location. We found that about half of the subjects exhibited a somatotopic placebo effect that was statistically independent of the spatial cue. We suggest that, after the induction of an initial expectation, placebo analgesia is spatially specific but does not necessarily depend on momentary fluctuations of spatial attention. This result rather suggests that the somatotopy of placebo analgesia relies on the creation of spatially guided expectations or conditioning, but can be maintained without ongoing monitoring of the affected body part.

Keywords: placebo analgesia, spatial attention, somatotopy

 






 

Other articles by Mrs Claudia Domnick



Readers of this article also read:

Role of aliskiren in cardio-renal protection and use in hypertensives with multiple risk factors
Functional mobility and balance in community-dwelling elderly submitted to multisensory versus strength exercises
Erratum - Intracellular heavy metal nanoparticle storage
Diclofenac epolamine topical patch relieves pain associated with ankle sprain
Implicit versus explicit associative learning and experimentally induced placebo hypoalgesia
Tramadol/paracetamol combination tablet for postoperative pain following ambulatory hand surgery: a double-blind, double-dummy, randomized, parallel-group trial
Improvement of adenoviral vector-mediated gene transfer to airway epithelia by folate-modified anionic liposomes
Steroid response pattern and outcome of pediatric idiopathic nephrotic syndrome: a single-center experience in northwest Iran
The relationship between deliberate self-harm behavior, body dissatisfaction, and suicide in adolescents: current concepts
Cumulative clinical experience from over a decade of use of levofloxacin in community-acquired pneumonia: critical appraisal and role in therapy