The Power of Belief: Expectation-driven and Placebo Modulation of Empathic Pain
For patients and families
In plain language
An automatic summary of structured registry data. It is an orientation aid, not a substitute for the official protocol or a physician assessment.
- What is being studied
- The protocol lists: Intranasal Oxytocin (OT) 24 IU, Intranasal placebo administration.
- Who it may be relevant to
- Registry conditions: Healthy Participants. Basic parameters: 18 years — 30 years · All.
- What needs checking
- Age, condition and sex are only basic indicators. Prior treatment, laboratory values and other mandatory requirements appear in the eligibility criteria below.
- Where it takes place
- China
- Next step
- Save the trial, show it to the treating physician, and confirm current recruitment with the study center. Costs, documents and travel →
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Overview
This study investigates how belief and expectation influence empathic pain-the pain we feel when observing others in distress. Healthy adult participants will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: no-treatment control, placebo nasal spray, oxytocin-containing nasal spray. Participants in both the placebo and oxytocin conditions will be informed that they are receiving oxytocin, described as a potent agent for pain relief. During functional MRI scanning, all participants will view naturalistic pain-related videos and provide ratings of perceived subjective pain. The study aims to examine how cognitive beliefs and neuromodulatory interventions alter subjective pain experience and brain activity, including changes in brain network communication.
Detailed description
This study examines how belief-driven expectations modulate empathic pain at both behavioral and neural levels. Healthy adult participants will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: no-treatment control, placebo nasal spray, oxytocin-containing nasal spray. Participants in both the placebo and oxytocin conditions will be informed that they are receiving oxytocin, described as a potent agent for pain relief.
During fMRI scanning, participants will complete a naturalistic empathic pain task by viewing videos depicting others in pain and rating their perceived pain on a standardized scale. Behavioral data will be transformed into analgesia-weighted scores to capture individual sensitivity to expectation-driven analgesia. Neural data will include whole-brain voxel-wise activity, multivariate predictive patterns derived from partial least squares regression (PLSR), and directed functional connectivity assessed using lagged partial-correlation directionality analysis (LPC-DA) to evaluate top-down and bottom-up information flow.
The primary objectives are to (1) assess the behavioral effects of expectation-driven analgesia, (2) identify brain regions predictive of pain modulation, and (3) characterize hierarchical network reorganization under different interventions.
Interventions
- Drug Intranasal Oxytocin (OT) 24 IU
Administer oxytocin (24 IU) intranasally, 6 individual 0.1 ml puffs (4 IU/0. 1ml), three puffs per nostril one every 30 seconds. The participants will be informed that they are receiving oxytocin, described as a potent agent for pain relief. - Drug Intranasal placebo administration
Administer placebo intranasally, 6 individual 0.1 ml puffs, three puffs per nostril one every 30 seconds. The participants will be informed that they are receiving oxytocin, described as a potent agent for pain relief.
Primary outcome measures
- Analgesia-weighted empathic pain ratings (R') [Time frame: During fMRI scanning (45 minutes follollowing treament adminstration), for each video stimulus presentation]
- Whole-brain multivariate predictive patterns [Time frame: During fMRI scanning (45 minutes follollowing treament adminstration), analyzed post-session]
- Directed functional connectivity and network hierarchy [Time frame: During fMRI scanning (45 minutes follollowing treament adminstration), analyzed post-session]
Eligibility criteria
Inclusion criteria
- (1) Healthy subjects without any past or present psychiatric or neurological disorders; (2) Healthy subjects without any current psychotherapeutic medication.
Exclusion criteria
- (1) Participant with any past or present psychiatric or neurological disorders; (2)Participant with any current psychotherapeutic medication.
Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.
Healthy volunteers: Yes
Study design
- Allocation
- Randomized
- Model
- Parallel assignment
- Masking
- Double blind
- Primary purpose
- Basic science
Study locations
China · 2 centers
- Weihua Zhao — Chengdu
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China — Chengdu
Identifiers
NCT: NCT07367672 · UESTC-neuSCAN-102