266 study using vastly diverging methods. Our study partly overlapped with two previous nocebo experiments 4,20, but additionally to the resting state measurements we were reproducing from those existing studies, we endeavored for the first time to image the brain’s electrophysiology during the learning and evocation of negative pain associations. Thanks to the rigorous analytical power of established EEG biomarkers, we were able to image complex neurophysiological patterns that are markers of specific learning patterns that engage complex cortical and subcortical learning processes. Our most important findings in chapter 6 were based on detrended fluctuation analysis, a sophisticated analytical method that reveals the patterns of long-range temporal correlations in the brain, during rest or within a specific task, such as nocebo induction. Our findings added to what we saw in chapter 4: complex learning dynamics –translated in chapter 6 into enhanced complexity in neural dynamics– were associated with larger nocebo magnitudes. Long-range neural networks have been associated with integrative processes in the brain and when thought of in relation to a pain learning task, may mark a process of consolidating information via cooperating memory and sensory processing systems in the brain. In line with this interpretation, connectivity findings in fMRI and also EEG results in chapter 3 provided evidence of cognitive-sensory integration in nocebo hyperalgesia, for instance by highlighting a role of connectivity between memory regions and the ACC. Taken together, these findings suggest that individuals whose neural patterns of activation are characterized by complex dynamics at rest may engage in increased cognitive integration between past and current pain experiences, in turn being potentially more susceptible to learning nocebo associations. Past pain experiences have been shown to form differential expectations that influence pain processing 4,20,24,26,30. In chapter 6 we reported significant increases in alpha-band power in nocebo responders during
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