Definition
Psychological factors and interventions can sometimes powerfully modulate pain, and there is an emerging neurobiology of pain-modulatory mechanisms. Central neural mechanisms associated with such phenomena as placebo/nocebo, hypnotic suggestion (see Post-Hypnotic Suggestion), attention, distraction, and even ongoing emotions are now thought to modulate pain by decreasing or increasing neural activity within many of the brain structures shown in Fig. 1 (Rainville 2002). This modulation includes endogenous pain-inhibitory and pain-facilitation pathways that descend to spinal dorsal horn, the origin of ascending spinal pathways for pain as well as modulation, which takes place within cortico-limbic circuits once nociceptive information has reached cortical levels (De Pascalis et al. 2001; Fields and Price 1997; Hofbauer et al. 2001; Porro et al. 2002; Rainville 2002). Hypnotically induced reduction in pain is based on changes in pain induced by suggestions and facilitated by...
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Price, D.D., Rainville, P. (2013). Hypnotic Analgesia. In: Gebhart, G.F., Schmidt, R.F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Pain. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28753-4_1831
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28753-4_1831
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