Activation of the opioidergic descending pain control system underlies placebo analgesia.

By F. Eippert, U. Bingel, E. Schoell, J. Yacubian, R. Klinger, Jürgen Lorenz, Christian Büchel. Neuron, 2009

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Neuroimaging of the Periaqueductal Gray: State of the Field (2011, methodology): “The effects of naloxone administration on topical placebo analgesia have also been investigated with fMRI (Eippert et al., 2009).”
Central mechanisms of pathological pain (2010, background): “Such inhibitory mechanisms have evolutionary value because they can enable the organism to ignore pain in critical situations, such as flight or fight, and serve as a mechanistic basis for placebo-induced analgesi”
The placebo effect: From concepts to genes. (2015, positive): “This is consistent with several other studies that have found reduced fMRI signals in pain-relevant regions during placebo analgesia, including reductions in insula, S1, S2, ACC, amygdala, and basal ganglia (Price et al., 2007; Eippert et al., 2009a).”
Descending pain modulation and chronification of pain (2014, neutral): “Descending noradrenergic projections to the spinal dorsal horns arise from the A5, the locus coeruleus (A6) and the Kölliker-Füse (A7) pontine noradrenergic nuclei, and these regions communicate with the RVM and PAG [84-87].”