The Bingel Laboratory
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Bingel and her research group focuses on the interaction between pain and cognitive processes. We have a longstanding expertise in investigating the CNS mechanisms underlying nociception, pain, and pain modulation in health and disease. In our research, we use behavioural paradigms, pharmacological modulations, as well as functional and structural brain imaging. Being particularly intrigued by the reciprocal effects of pain and cognition, we have a strong focus on translational questions such as the role of expectations and prior experiences on analgesic treatment outcomes. Our interdisciplinary research group comprises neurologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, biologists, and computer scientists and is based at the Department of Neurology at the University Medicine Essen. We are affiliated with the Erwin-L-Hahn institute for magnetic resonance imaging and the Translational Pain Research Department of the University Pain Center. Our research is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
Recent News
We warmly invite you to this great online patient forum (in German) on 29.9.2024 from 17:30 – 19:15 where Ulrike Bingel, Helena Hartmann, and Sven Benson will talk about the power of expectations. Click here to download the flyer and here to register for the Zoom webinar.
At the WTZ-Aktionstag organized by the Westdeutsches Tumorzentrum, some of the Bingellab’s members showed patients and colleagues what and how we are researching treatment expectations and their effects on pain. Thanks to all people who were interested in our work!
A CRC/TRR 289 research team from the Universities of Marburg, Giessen and Essen (including the Bingellab) investigated how treatment expectations influence treatment success and how homeopathy uses these effects. Homeopathy is often presented as having no effect at all because no effect beyond the placebo effect has been proven. Globules do not contain any pharmacologically active ingredients that could rationally explain an effect, yet both patients and homeopaths report positive effects for various disorders. How can this be explained? Read the original publication here.
Interdisciplinary multimodal pain treatment (IMPT) represents an effective treatment option for chronic pain. Alas, it is also a very expensive and personnel-intensive intervention. Although IMPT could be accomplished in a resource-saving day hospital setting, there is no general insurance coverage for it and thus, IMPT is usually conducted in an in-patient setting. In this study, members of the CRC compared the differences in treatment outcome between, an otherwise identical, ambulatory and in-patient IMPT, at the back pain center Essen, in a matched cohort. Our data provide novel insights by suggesting at least equal effectiveness of ambulatory compared with in-patient IMPT for patients with chronic back pain. Moreover, ambulatory treatment seemed partly superior, with greater improvements in pain-related disability 3 months and in pain intensity 6 months post treatment. This advantage could have been driven by a larger gain in pain-related self-efficacy, which was already present, directly post-treatment for ambulatory patients. Read the english publication led by Dustin Maser and Ulrike Bingel in the journal Pain here.
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