We’re excited to host a lab visit attached to the @bioDGPs_DGPA Young Scientist Retreat and can’t wait to show you all the various ways we induce and measure pain!

Today we can share with you our upcoming program for our virtual CRC/TRR 289 “Treatment Expectation” webinar series in the 2nd half of 2023. After wonderful speakers from the first half of the year like Andrea Evers, Keith Petrie, Irving Kirsch or Fabrizio Benedetti, we are now expecting equally wonderful talks and discussion starting in September with Marta Pecina, Karin Meißner, David Hohenschurz-Schmidt and Markus Ploner. Please note that all talks will take place at 4:00 pm CET. You can register by emailing and join the meeting here. Don’t worry: If you missed previous talks you can have a look at our Youtube channel, here you will find webinar talks, videos on our scientific topic and much more https://www.youtube.com/@SFB-TRR_289.

PhysioBib, together with Helena Hartmann, accompanied the SIPS conference in May 2023 with the camera and interviewed various researchers about their impressions and current work. For the conference, scientists from all over the world came to Duisburg to exchange the latest findings on the placebo effect for four days. You can watch the whole video on PhysioBib’s YouTube channel. Also check out this exciting video on placebo effects in physiotherapy. Pictured above from left to right: Helena Hartmann, Nils Reiter, Loïc Luttmann, and Noak Liem.

We welcome a new student assistant, Aoibhne Braunewell (right in the picture) who studies medicine in the 7th semester. Furthermore, two medical students, Franziska Frysch and Johanna Gronen (left in the picture) , will join the lab in October 2023 to start working on their medical doctoral theses. We hope you enjoy your stay at the Bingellab!

The Bingellab and Prof. Ulrike Bingel are now officially fellows of the Max Planck School of Cognition! We are looking forward to supervising and supporting future PhD projects all around the interaction of pain and cognition. And after completing her lab rotations, we are excited to officially have Jialin Li join the Bingellab as a PhD student for the next few years.

Helena wrote an article about the nocebo effect for the German science communication magazine “Gehirn & Geist” (Spektrum Verlag). Subscribers of the magazine can read the article “Wenn der Beipackzettel krank macht” in edition 7/2023 here.

Julian was interviewed by Nils and Noak from PhysioBib about the placebo effect. What is it, how relevant it is for Physiotherapy, and how can we use it systematically? Watch the German video on YouTube.

In May 2023, we successfully hosted and co-organized the 4th international conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies (SIPS) in Duisburg in the beautiful Landschaftspark. You can rewatch the press conference and science slam now on the SFB/TRR 289’s Youtube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe here!

How can I use my own expectations in a meaningful way to improve my treatment – regardless of the disease and the therapy? What do nocebo effects have to do with have to do with adverse effects? How do I read a package insert correctly? How do I prepare for a consultation with a doctor? What could drug research and health policy do to make therapies more do to make therapies more tolerable and effective? You can now rewatch this forum on YouTube.

Treatments are designed to help people fight diseases or their symptoms, and they are supposed to make us feel better. However, some treatments can have unpleasant side effects. But did you know that we can sometimes feel side effects because we expect them to happen? Imagine that you have a cold and your parents give you a pill to help you get better. If they tell you that the pill could give you a headache, you might feel the headache coming on as soon as you take it—but if they had not told you, you might not have felt the headache at all. Such negative expectations are the driving force behind what is known as the nocebo effect. This article explains what the nocebo effect is, how it works, and how we can combat it.

This article was written for children between 12 and 15 years by Helena Hartmann and colleagues, but is a great introduction into nocebo effects for people of all ages! Read our publication The Nocebo Effect: The Placebo’s “Evil Twin” now in the journal Frontiers for Young Minds.