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Category: Project

Description: Placebo pills reliably reduce pain, which is closely tied to interoceptive signals related to nociception and autonomic regulation. However, no studies so far have systematically examined the generalising vs specific effects of placebo analgesia in transferring from pain to other bodily signals. In this preregistered study, we aim to investigate whether the placebo analgesia effect on pain may generalise to the perception of other neutral interoceptive signals, i.e., heartbeat perception. We recruited 88 healthy participants (47 female, 41 male), of which 44 (23 female, 21 male) underwent a placebo analgesia induction. Using the Heartbeat Counting Task, we derived three interoceptive dimensions, interoceptive accuracy, sensibility and awareness. Although we were able to induce a placebo analgesia effect, no difference between the placebo and the control group was found in any of the interoceptive dimensions. These findings were supported by post-hoc Bayesian analyses, which indicated moderate evidence for this absence of a group difference. Our findings thus do not indicate a generalisation of the placebo analgesia effect from pain to cardiac interoceptive awareness. These findings may be a valuable reference for further investigations and help to uncover the extent of how our own painful experiences relate to our perception of ourselves and the world. They also have implications for understanding the connection between different bodily systems in healthy individuals and inspire research on chronic pain disorders.