The Bingel Laboratory
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Bingel and her research group focuses on the interaction between pain and cognitive processes. We have a longstanding expertise in investigating the CNS mechanisms underlying nociception, pain, and pain modulation in health and disease. In our research, we use behavioural paradigms, pharmacological modulations, as well as functional and structural brain imaging. Being particularly intrigued by the reciprocal effects of pain and cognition, we have a strong focus on translational questions such as the role of expectations and prior experiences on analgesic treatment outcomes. Our interdisciplinary research group comprises neurologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, biologists, and computer scientists and is based at the Department of Neurology at the University Medicine Essen. We are affiliated with the Erwin-L-Hahn institute for magnetic resonance imaging and the Translational Pain Research Department of the University Pain Center. Our research is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
Recent News
The research topic in the journal Frontiers in Psychology on "Optimizing the Therapeutic Potential in Clinical Settings: Leveraging Placebos and Mitigating Nocebo Effects" now includes three contributions from our lab! Thanks Frontiers for pushing this important topic!
[1] "Optimized communication during risk disclosure to reduce nocebo headache after lumbar puncture - a study protocol" (Asan et al., 2025)
[2] "From catastrophizing to catalyzing: does pain catastrophizing modulate the beneficial impact of open-label placebos for chronic low back pain?" (Caliskan et al., 2025)
[3] "The association between test anxiety, learning strategies, and open-label placebo effects on academic test performance" (Frisaldi et al., 2025)
Huge congratulations to our (former) medical doctoral student Elif Buse Caliskan, who passed her doctoral defense today with flying colors! She wrote her thesis in the Bingellab on "The role of anxiety in nocebo hyperalgesia and its impact on pain perception". We wish Elif all the best for the next steps in her career!
We are currently looking for support with our experimental studies in Essen, particularly with MRI measurements but also general research assistant tasks. Feel free to download and forward this ad to interested parties here. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Katarina Forkmann (katarina.forkmann@uk-essen.de).
Helena Hartmann and colleagues systematically reviewed 50/2060 screened studies that looked at how changing someone’s own pain experience — through substances like opioids, acetaminophen, cannabinoids, placebos, alcohol, or hypnosis — also affects how people feel and respond to others’ emotions and pain. The authors found mixed and inconsistent effects, meaning some types of pain modulation sometimes increased or decreased social cognition abilities, with the most consistent and replicated result being that placebo analgesia reduced empathy for others’ pain. However, because the studies were very different from each other and often had small sample sizes or specific study designs, a lot more work is needed to understand how our own pain influences social feelings and behavior overall. Read the full publication in the journal Pain here.
