(Un)Learning Pain: Learning Mechanisms of Placebo Effects in Pain

This webinar - held on 23 May 2023 - was produced through a collaboration of the IASP's Pain and Placebo Special Interest Group and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA - in particular - the University of Maryland School of Nursing's Placebo Beyond Opinions Center and the University of Maryland's Center to Advance Chronic Pain Research. All three groups are aligned on advancing unbiased knowledge of placebo effects by promoting interdisciplinary investigation of the placebo phenomenon and nurturing placebo research.                                                                 

The IASP defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage" to better articulate the biopsychosocial dimensions of this phenomenon. While our understanding of pain has greatly evolved over the past decades, there are still fundamental questions that need to be addressed, including its psychological components.

This webinar explored the psychology factors that modulate pain perception and pain memory, the psychology of placebo and the learning mechanisms of placebo effects, and the psychology of education - with a special interest in increasing the effectiveness of teaching, upbringing, and memory training.
                                                                                          
Participants included:

• Przemysław Bąbel, PhD, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
• Luana Colloca, MD, PhD, University of Maryland School of Nursing, USA (host)