Collaborative Research Centers offer the opportunity to provide answers to complex questions. They are long-term, interdisciplinary, and approach a topic in detail and innovatively from different research angles using a wide variety of methods. The Collaborative Research Center/Transregio "Treatment Expectation" has received a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for these highly competitive scientific projects.
New insights into the power of expectation will lead to a systematic application of expectancy effects in therapy in the transregional Collaborative Research Center (SFB/TRR) 289 "Treatment Expectation".
In the first step, the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms of positive and negative treatment expectations and their effect on drug efficacy have to be deciphered in experimental models. The second step: How do individual differences in patients explain themselves? And third, what are the possibilities for the clinical application of expectancy effects in specific patient groups?
The spokesperson for the joint research network between the universities of Duisburg-Essen, Hamburg and Marburg is Prof. Dr. Ulrike Bingel from the Medical Faculty of the UDE. The DFG will initially fund the project for 4 years with around 12 million euros. During this funding period, the scientists will focus on two common diseases: chronic pain and depression. Later, autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases will also be investigated.