Figure 1.

Experimental setup and physicians’ satisfaction ratings during the three experimental conditions. (A) Illustration of the setup for the fMRI experiment. The physician is lying down in the scanner and the patient is placed opposite the physician, sitting on a chair. A heat pain stimulator is strapped onto the patient’s arm and a sham analgesic device is attached adjacent to the heat stimulator. The physician holds a button box that allows for pressing a ‘pain relief button’, a ‘control button’ and performing self-ratings on a visual analogue scale. The physician and the patient are positioned so that they can have constant eye contact and the physician can see the patient from the waistline and up. Treatment instructions for the physician are displayed on a screen. (B) Results from physicians’ self-ratings during fMRI scanning. After each experimental task, physicians were prompted to answer the question “How do you feel?”. The physicians responded by moving a cursor on a horizontal visual analogue scale anchored by −10 “completely dissatisfied” and +10 “completely satisfied”. A within-subject statistical analysis of the physicians’ ratings (ANOVA) validated that the three conditions ‘treatment’, ‘no-treatment’ and ‘control’ were associated with significantly different feelings.