Direct Evidence for Spinal Cord Involvement in Placebo Analgesia
Falk Eippert,1,*
Jürgen Finsterbusch,1
Ulrike Bingel,2
Christian Büchel1
Placebo analgesia is a prime example of the impact that psychological
factors have on pain perception. We used functional magnetic
resonance imaging of the human spinal cord to test the hypothesis
that placebo analgesia results in a reduction of nociceptive
processing in the spinal cord. In line with behavioral data
that show decreased pain responses under placebo, pain-related
activity in the spinal cord is strongly reduced under placebo.
These results provide direct evidence for spinal inhibition
as one mechanism of placebo analgesia and highlight that psychological
factors can act on the earliest stages of pain processing in
the central nervous system.
2 Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20246 Hamburg, Germany.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: f.eippert{at}uke.uni-hamburg.de
