# Brain Imaging and Pain: Analysis of Placebo Analgesia

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA · 2020 · $454,684

## Abstract

Chronic pain represents a significant public health concern, affecting over 100 million adults,
and accounting for over $600 billion US annually. Current treatments for chronic pain lack
efficacy, and opioid treatments have led to a significant misuse, addiction, and secondary public
health crisis. We have shown that endogenous pain modulation, in the form of “placebo”
manipulations have a now well-defined neural underpinning, suggestive of descending pain
modulation within and perhaps from the brain to lower nervous system. Our work has identified
placebo as a potentially acceptable intervention for patients with chronic pain either as a method
to enhance existing treatments, or perhaps as a stand-alone treatment. To date, the
contribution of spinal cord mechanisms to placebo analgesia has been largely speculative. We
propose to investigate specific hypotheses about both brain and spinal cord mechanisms, and
their interactions to a model of placebo analgesia through the use of functional magnetic
resonance imaging (FMRI). The neural imaging of the spinal cord is an innovative new
approach heretofore not feasible for the investigation of placebo mechanisms. We will combine
this new approach with our previously published, and well articulated placebo manipulation and
experimental design that will allow us to investigate the relative contribution of brain and cord
mechanisms in placebo analgesia. We will employ both traditional fMRI, as well as functional
connectivity analyses to investigate relationships among a priori regions of interest in the brain
and the spinal cord. Our innovative research design, previously employed with only brain
imaging, will allow for the investigation of more centrally dependent mechanisms, vs. those that
are more peripheral nervous system dependent. Our team of investigators has all the necessary
expertise in chronic pain, pain processing, quantitative sensory testing, neuroimaging, and
experimental design to successfully accomplish the aims proposed in this application. We have
repeatedly shown our ability to successfully recruit participants for the proposed design, and
have successfully employed all the procedures, either in peer reviewed publications, or as
demonstrated in our preliminary studies. One critical finding from our previous work has shown
that the acceptability of placebo interventions is the empirical support and understanding of the
mechanisms of placebo. Thus, in addition to developing a complete understanding of the
mechanisms of placebo that might results in new treatment approaches, being able to describe
these mechanisms to the public, pain practitioners, and to patients will increase the acceptability
of them in clinical practice, thus improving pain treatment.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9937663
- **Project number:** 5R01AT001424-13
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
- **Principal Investigator:** Michael E ROBINSON
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $454,684
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2003-03-15 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9937663

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9937663, Brain Imaging and Pain: Analysis of Placebo Analgesia (5R01AT001424-13). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9937663. Licensed CC0.

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