In the face of pain: The choice of visual cues in pain conditioning matters

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Visual cue conditioning is a valuable experimental paradigm to investigate placebo and nocebo effects in pain. However, little attention has been paid to the cues themselves and potential variability of effects (their quantity and quality) stemming from the choice of stimuli. Yet, this seemingly methodological question has important implications for the interpretation of experimental findings in terms of their significance for clinical practice. METHODS: We investigated the effect of heat pain conditioning using different types of visual cues (abstract images, faces and pseudo-words) in a group of 22 healthy volunteers. We analysed conditioning effects calculated as the differenc..