ABSTRACT
Placebo effects can be due to conscious expectations of pain sensation, which can stem from personal experiences that are recalled through verbal suggestions. Although future research is needed to understand the neurobiological mechanisms of placebo effects driven by interpersonal expectations and vicarious learning, there have been attempts to analyze observational learning within an associative learning framework for aversive and fear models. It is pivotal performing future behavioral and brain-imaging studies to illustrate the mechanisms underlying observationally induced placebo and nocebo phenomena. Another area of research that deserves further research is represented by the role of expectancies, social learning placebo, and nocebo effects across individuals. Although interactions between a physician and his/her patient may seem ancillary to the patient's treatment recovery, a recent study has shown that patient-physician interactions are significantly interwoven when it comes to the placebo effect. In this study, the physicians were given painful stimuli in order to experience a subsequent placebo and trust its efficacy.
