Cited by 84Pain Management and Placebo EffectPain Mechanisms and TreatmentsPain Management and Treatment

A Bayesian Perspective on Sensory and Cognitive Integration in Pain Perception and Placebo Analgesia

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Anchisi, Davide, Zanon, Marco·2015·PLOS ONE

Abstract

The placebo effect is a component of any response to a treatment (effective or inert), but we still ignore why it exists. We propose that placebo analgesia is a facet of pain perception, others being the modulating effects of emotions, cognition and past experience, and we suggest that a computational understanding of pain may provide a unifying explanation of these phenomena. Here we show how Bayesian decision theory can account for such features and we describe a model of pain that we tested against experimental data. Our model not only agrees with placebo analgesia, but also predicts that learning can affect pain perception in other unexpected ways, which experimental evidence supports. Finally, the model can also reflect the strategies used by pain perception, showing that modulation by disparate factors is intrinsic to the pain process.

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  • Current perspectives on the perceptual mechanism behind expectation effects suggest that an agent maintains multiple potential hypotheses about the cause of a sensory input, and selects the one which best represents the incoming sensory information at any given time.

    “Current perspectives on the perceptual mechanism behind expectation effects10,35–38 suggest that an agent maintains multiple potential hypotheses about the cause of a sensory input, and selects the one which best represents the incoming sensory information at any given time.”

    From Boundary effects of expectation in human pain perception (2019) · cites this paper as [36]

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  1. [43]Gracely RN (1994) Studies of pain in normal man. In: Wall P, Melzack R, editors, The textbook of pain., New York: Churchill-Livingstone 3rd edition, pp. 315– 336.
  2. [49]Jeffreys H (1939) Theory of probability. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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Authors
Anchisi, D., & Zanon, M.
Affiliations
University of Udine (IT)
Corresponding author
Anchisi, Davide
Venue
PLOS ONE
Published
2015-02-09
Volume
10
Issue
2
Pages
e0117270
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W1976728550
Cited by
84
References
85
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 1
FWCI
3.01
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Institutional Research Information System (University of Udine) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Pain Management and Placebo Effect
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Pain Mechanisms and Treatments
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine › Pain Management and Treatment
Keywords
placebo analgesia, pain perception, Bayesian decision theory, sensory integration, cognitive integration, emotional modulation of pain, prior experience
MeSH terms
Adult, Analgesia, Bayes Theorem, Cognition, Female, Humans, Learning, Male, Pain, Placebo Effect, Young Adult, Pain Perception, Pain Management

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