Today four of our PhD and medical doctoral students (from left to right: Lea Busch, Jaspreed Kaur, Elif Buse Caliskan and Linda Ludwig) are presenting their work at the Tag der Forschung of the University Medicine Essen, and some of our postdocs are acting as reviewers & evaluating other posters. Good luck to all for their presentations and fingers crossed for the poster prizes! More information about the Forschungstag can be found here.

The Early Career Researcher (ECR) Summer School, organized by the CRC/TRR 289 “Treatment Expectation” and preceding and connected to SIPS 2023 in Duisburg, Germany, combines theoretical lectures with active “hands-on” workshops and networking opportunities.

Alongside subject-specific basics of placebo and nocebo effects, the program will focus on practical skills such as statistics (Bayesian analysis), as well as meta-scientific skills such as open science, science communication and online presence as a scientist (e.g., social media, own website). In addition, a final discussion session will provide a framework to share issues and challenges in one’s own research, both with peers and more experienced scientists. In this way, the summerschool will prepare the participants in the best possible way for participation in the SIPS and for their own scientific careers. Social events, e.g. a planned pub quiz, in the evening will round off the program and invite people to get to know each other.

In case of a successful application, the summer school is free of charge, and the application is separate from registration to the SIPS conference.

More information can be found here.

Three early career researchers from the Department of Neurology at the University Medical Center Essen received awards for pain research. 

The three innovative projects focus on expectancy and learning mechanisms in the perception and processing of pain, both in healthy individuals and in patients. Congratulations to Frederik Schlitt for the 2nd prize in the category Clinical Research on his work in pain-related learning mechanisms in patients with chronic back pain. Dr. Laura Ricarda Lanters accepted the 2nd prize in the Basic Research category for her work on the specificity of conditioned nocebo effects in visceral interoceptive pain. The prizes were awarded by the German Pain Society and the donor Grünenthal GmbH. Livia Asan can be excited the 1st place of the Young Investigator Award for Pain. She wants to investigate how adverse effects after lumbar puncture can be avoided.

“We are very proud that this year scientists from the University Medical Center Essen were represented in every category of the highest award for pain research in Germany. Their work confirms the success of the interdisciplinary, cross-project collaboration in the Translational Pain Research Unit at the Center for Translational Neuro- and Behavioral Sciences,” said Prof. Ulrike Bingel, head of the Center for University Pain Medicine and spokesperson of the SFB/TRR 289 Treatment Expectation.

More information on the three awardees here.

How long does the positive effect of a three-week treatment with open-label placebos (OLP) last in chronic back pain? This research question was posed by the team led by Dr. Julian Kleine Borgmann and Prof. Ulrike Bingel from the Center for Translational Neuro- and Behavioral Sciences at the University Hospital Essen, where they started a three-year follow-up study. The results have now been published as a research paper in the journal PAIN and can be read here. After three years, the effect was no longer detectable in terms of pain intensity, movement restrictions and mood. Read more about the study here!

The website of the 4th International Conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies is online, and the call for abstracts and early bird registration are open!

The program already consists of seven plenary sessions and you can apply yourself for four different contributions: poster presentation, data blitz, workshop, or science slam. For all young scientists we have also planned two special program items: A Science Slam, where you can present your own research clearly and understandably in just 3 minutes, and a (free!) Summer School with workshops on Open Science, Bayesian Analysis in JASP, Science Communication, and Online Visibility as a Scientist.

Visit us at www.sips-conference.com!

The conference is co-organized by the SIPS and the Collaborative Research Center CRC/TRR 289 “Treatment Expectation”.

We are happy to welcome Jens Sperzel who studies human medicine at the Universität Duisburg-Essen. As part of the COLA project and additional 7 Tesla measurements at the Erwin L. Hahn Institute, he will devote himself to his medical doctoral thesis and other areas of pain research.

Sarah Neumann recently started to work as a student assistant in our team. She is studying educational science at the Universität Duisburg-Essen and will asstist in several administrative areas in our lab.  

Today we have a new medical doctoral student starting in the lab to do her dissertation with us!

Clara Erfurt is studying human medicine at the Universität Duisburg-Essen and is going to start her research for her dissertation in October at the Bingellab. She will be supporting one of our experimental studies and will be researching in the field of placebo effects und treatment expectation.

We warmly welcome Jialin Li who will join our lab as a PhD candidate in the following three years! She did a lab rotation with us and Dr. Tamas Spisak, supported by the Max Planck School of Cognition. Before that, she got her Master’s degree in Psychology from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, under supervision of Prof. Benjamin Becker and Prof. Keith Kendrick. Her research interests include placebo and nocebo effects, appetitive and aversive learning, how expectation and learning influence treatment, and disease prediction using machine learning approach.