In this study, our team investigated the question of whether humans build quicker and more robust memory traces for stimuli that signal an impending pain increase than for those that signal a decrease in pain. From an evolutionary perspective, this could be seen as a “better safe than sorry” strategy. Using an intricate experimental design, it was possible to demonstrate that healthy volunteers learned pain-predicting stimuli better and faster than stimuli that predicted pain relief.  Such a learning strategy could be a protective mechanism to avoid potentially dangerous situations. However, there were few differences with respect to “unlearning” (i.e., extinction) between the stimuli. This suggests that learning and unlearning of (un)pleasant associations are based on different mechanisms. The results of this study, which was part of the Collaborative Research Centre “Extinction Learning, 1280” by the DFG, help us to further understand the mechanisms behind the chronification and maintenance of pain disorders. Read the full article here.

We are happy to welcome Helena Hartmann who has joined our lab as a postdoctoral researcher on April 1st! Helena completed her PhD at the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Unit at the University of Vienna and then conducted further research at the Social Brain Lab of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience as a visiting researcher. In her PhD, she investigated the behavioral and neural underpinnings of shared representations between first-hand pain and empathy for pain as well as prosocial behavior. At the Bingellab, she will be working on neuroimaging of placebo and nocebo effects in pain and modulation of pain-related expectations. Find out more about Helena on her personal website and on Twitter.

As a study nurse, Sarah will be supporting our clinical studies from beginning to end, coordinating the different needs of patients, researchers, medical, and administrative staff. Although in her daily work she has been taking on many of these tasks already, the formal training with its final exam has helped her to solidify her knowledge and it marks an important step in her career. We are happy to have her on board! To find out more about the Study Nurse training program at the UKE click here!

We are happy to welcome Isabel Krüger who received the ELAN grant for excellent medical students from the Faculty of Medicine at the UDE. The ELAN graduate school is a great opportunity for medical doctoral students to enter the field of research while receiving close mentoring and structural support.

As part of her dissertation in neurology, Isabel will be working on one of our experimental projects for the next couple of months.

Find out more about ELAN here! 

Kathi and Tobias received the award for pain research (2nd prize) of the German Pain Society for their research on treatment expectations and their influence on the success of migraine prophylaxis. We are very proud that this is the 5th time this award has been given to members of our lab. Read the publication here!

A new publication by Dustin, Diana, and colleagues presents pilot data from an observational cohort study at the back pain center in Essen showing that treatment expectancy is a predictor for the efficacy of Interdisciplinary Multimodal Pain Therapy in chronic back pain patients.  Open access, available here.

Two new TPRU studies shed light on learning and memory mechanisms associated with visceral pain. Adriane and colleagues report that context-dependent conditioning can transform benign interoceptive signals into predictors of visceral pain (read article here). Julian, Katharina and colleagues compared somatic and visceral pain and found that acute visceral pain interferes more with memory encoding (read article here).

The CRC/TRR 289 in collaboration with the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies (SIPS) announces the Early Career Research Fellowship for international applicants. You can apply for this fantastic fellowship until September 30, 2021. Find more information here!

Katharina, Julian and colleagues could recently show that positive expectations modulate the effectiveness of a migraine prophylaxis (read more here). They further published a study protocol to investigate the effects of open-label placebo on migraine symptoms (available in BMJ Open).