The Power of Belief: Expectation-driven and Placebo Modulation of Empathic Pain

What Was Tested

In this not phased trial, researchers set out to test Oxytocin.

This study investigates how belief and expectation influence empathic pain-the pain the researchers feel when observing others in distress.

Healthy adult participants will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: no-treatment control, placebo nasal spray, oxytocin-containing nasal spray.

Participants in both the placebo and oxytocin conditions will be informed that they are receiving oxytocin, described as a potent agent for pain relief.

It had three arms (groups): Intranasal Oxytocin (active comparator), Intranasal placebo (active comparator) and Intranasal nothing (control) (no intervention).

Administer placebo intranasally.

Control condition.

The registry classes the interventions as drug.

More on the Plan

This study examines how belief-driven expectations modulate empathic pain at both behavioral and neural levels.

During fMRI scanning, participants will complete a naturalistic empathic pain task by viewing videos depicting others in pain and rating their perceived pain on a standardized scale.

Behavioral data will be transformed into analgesia-weighted scores to capture individual sensitivity to expectation-driven analgesia.

Neural data will include whole-brain voxel-wise activity, multivariate predictive patterns derived from partial least squares regression (PLSR), and directed functional connectivity assessed using lagged partial-correlation directionality analysis (LPC-DA) to evaluate top-down and bottom-up information flow.

Who Took Part

Enrollment: 120 planned participants were the target.

It was open to people of any sex aged from 18 years up to 30 years.

Healthy volunteers could join, not only people with the condition.

Examples of who could join: (1) Healthy subjects without any past or present psychiatric or neurological disorders; (2) Healthy subjects without any current psychotherapeutic medication.

The full record lists 1 inclusion and 1 exclusion criteria; among the exclusions: (1) participant with any past or present psychiatric or neurological disorders; (2)participant with any current psychotherapeutic medication.

How the Study Was Run

Design: randomized, parallel-group and double-blind.

Because people in this Oxytocin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

The Oxytocin group and the comparison group ran side by side rather than switching.

As a double-blind Oxytocin study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

Those kept unaware of assignments: investigator and outcomes assessor.

It started in 2025-12-01 with completion listed for 2026-02-20.

It ran at 2 sites in China (2).

Its stated primary purpose is basic science.

What Was Measured

Researchers chose this as the main measure: Analgesia-weighted empathic pain ratings (R') (time frame: During fMRI scanning (45 minutes follollowing treament adminstration), for each video stimulus presentation). Whole-brain multivariate predictive patterns (time frame: During fMRI scanning (45 minutes follollowing treament adminstration), analyzed post-session). Directed functional connectivity and network hierarchy (time frame: During fMRI scanning (45 minutes follollowing treament adminstration), analyzed post-session).

What This Means in Plain Language

Put simply, this is a not phased, randomized trial of Oxytocin in 120 people.

It is still recruiting; no results are posted to the registry yet, so nothing here describes outcomes.

More context: the Oxytocin compound page, all human trials.