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CRPP Pain

Cognitive intervention in low back pain

Grafik Work Package 4

Background and own contributions

Subjective cognitive states, such as beliefs or expectations, are empirically established and important modulators of pain perception. During the first phase of the CRPP, we have been examining the influence of expectations on pain perception from neurobiological and clinical perspectives. In one study of our studies, we used the clinical setting of infiltration therapy against low back pain in order to investigate the influence of treatment expectations on clinical outcome. We found that treatment expectations were not only, as expected, significantly associated with experienced pain two weeks after treatment, but the effect was sufficiently strong and robust to predict individual treatment response out-of-sample.

Main research question

Building on our results from the first phase of the CRPP, as described above, this work package will develop brief cognitive interventions that enable patients to enhance benefits from treatment expectation effects. In a randomised controlled trial, we are planning to evaluate whether this approach could increase the efficacy of injection therapy against chronic low back pain.