Research.

When we hear a friend or film critic give rave reviews to a new release, we plug our ears, fearing disappointment if the movie fails to live up to expectations. Sometimes we even actively lower our expectations, hoping to be pleasantly surprised later on. But are these the best strategies? Positive expectations can also be profoundly beneficial, as in the case of the well-known placebo effect. So what determines whether expectations help or hurt us? What are the basic components of expectancy? How do our expectations shape what we learn, and how does what we learn shape our expectations? Do expectations merely change how we make decisions about our environment, or do they actually change the world we perceive?

To address these questions, I study how expectations affect the human brain, and how the brain in turn shapes our conscious experience. I use fMRI to identify the brain regions that respond to expectations, and I test whether brain and behavioral responses to pain and emotion differ as a function of manipulated expectations. Finally, I take advantage of advanced fMRI analysis approaches (e.g. whole-brain multi-level mediation analysis) to isolate the brain mechanisms that give rise to expectancy effects on subjective experience. I take a multi-modal approach to the study of expectancy effects on affective experience, combining fMRI with other methodologies, including psychophysiology, pharmacological interventions, and TMS.

Thus far I've focused primarily on expectancy effects on pain. Current projects combine this work with computational modeling and extend my focus on expectancy into other domains to build a stronger picture of the general mechanisms underlying expectancy effects on affect and subjective experience. Future projects will investigate the translational implications of this work, such as the extent to which clinical outcomes depend on patient beliefs, and testing whether expectancy-based processing is altered in specific patient populations.

Representative publications

Atlas, L.Y., Bolger, N., Lindquist, M.A., and Wager, T.D. (2010). Brain mediators of predictive cue effects on perceived pain. The Journal of Neuroscience 30(39), 12964-12977.[Link to paper]. Additional information.

Atlas, L.Y., Whittington, R.A., Lindquist, M.A., Wielgosz, J., Sonty, N, and Wager, T.D. (2012). Dissociable influences of opiates and expectations on pain. The Journal of Neuroscience 32(23), 8053-8064. [Link to paper]. Supplementary Materials.

Atlas, L.Y., Wielgosz, J., Whittington, R.A., and Wager, T.D. (2013). Specifying the non-specific factors underlying opioid analgesia: Attention, expectancy, and affect. Psychopharmacology, DOI: 10.1007/s00213-013-3296-1. Download PDF.

Atlas, L.Y. and Wager, T.D. (2012). How expectations shape pain. Neuroscience Letters, 520(2), 140-148. [Link to paper].

Atlas, L.Y. and Wager, T.D. (2013). Expectations and beliefs: Insights from cognitive neuroscience. In Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Neuroscience, Eds. Kevin Ochsner and Stephen Kosslyn. Download uncorrected proof.

Here is a talk I gave in September on mediation analysis for fMRI at MGH / Harvard Med School's Brainmaps Seminar Series. It's best viewed in Google chrome. Apologies for the technical difficulties, and please let me know if you have questions.