Placebo Analgesia From a Rubber Hand

Coleshill, Matthew J.; George, David N.; Mazzoni, Giuliana

Abstract

© 2017 American Pain Society Placebo analgesia, reductions in pain after administration of an inert treatment, is a well documented phenomenon. We report, to our knowledge, the first demonstration that placebo analgesia can be experienced when a sham analgesic is applied onto a rubber hand. The effect was obtained by exploiting the rubber hand illusion, in which ownership is felt over a rubber arm that is unattached to the body. Under conditions of synchronous as well as asynchronous visuotactile stimulation, a thermal pain stimulus was delivered on the real arm of 20 participants and seemingly also on the rubber arm, before and after applying a sham analgesic and a control cream only to the rubber arm. During synchronous visuotactile stimulation, pain was experienced on the rubber arm, and the application of the sham analgesic to the rubber arm significantly decreased the severity of reported pain. This shows that experience of the body can modulate expectations and the induction of placebo analgesia. Perspective This article presents an experiment suggesting that a placebo treatment applied to a rubber hand during the rubber hand illusion can produce placebo analgesia . This finding indicates that embodiment may influence the placebo effect, a previously unexamined factor in the treatment process with potential applications to treatment administration.

Citation

Coleshill, M. J., George, D. N., & Mazzoni, G. (2017). Placebo Analgesia From a Rubber Hand. Journal of Pain, 18(9), 1067-1077. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2017.04.004

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 10, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Apr 26, 2017
• Publication Date: 2017-09
• Deposit Date: Jun 20, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 20, 2017
• Journal: The journal of pain
• Print ISSN: 1526-5900
• Electronic ISSN: 1528-8447
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 1067-1077
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2017.04.004
• Keywords: Placebo effect; Placebo analgesia; Rubber hand illusion; Body ownership; Embodiment
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/452545
• Publisher URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1526590017305588
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Placebo Analgesia From a Rubber Hand; Journal Title: The Journal of Pain; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2017.04.004; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2017 by the American Pain Society