title: Changes in perception of treatment efficacy are associated to the magnitude of the nocebo effect and to personality traits.
abstract: The nocebo effect in motor performance consists in a reduction of force and increase of fatigue following the application of an inert treatment that the recipient believes to be effective. This effect is variable across individuals and it is usually stronger if conditioning -exposure to the active effect of the treatment- precedes a test session, in which the treatment is inert. In the current explorative study we used a conditioning procedure to investigate whether subjective perception of treatment effectiveness changes between the conditioning and the test session and whether this change is related to dispositional traits and to the nocebo-induced reduction of force. Results showed that 56.1% of participants perceived the treatment as more effective in the test than in the conditioning session, had a more pronounced reduction of force, felt more effort and sense of weakness and were characterized by lower levels of optimism and higher anxiety traits compared to the other 43.9% of participants, who conversely perceived the treatment as less effective in the test session than in the conditioning. These findings highlight for the first time a link between changes in perception of treatment effectiveness, personality traits and the magnitude of the nocebo response in motor performance.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, 37131, Italy.|Department of Pain and Translational Symptom Science, University of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore, 21201, USA.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Corsi
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, 37131, Italy.|Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, 81746, Iran.
authors.forename: Mehran
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Emadi Andani
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, 37131, Italy.
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tinazzi
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, 37131, Italy.
authors.forename: Mirta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fiorio
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D064786:Nocebo Effect; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D010551:Personality / Q000502:physiology*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D055815:Young Adult