Objective.—To estimate the importance and implications of placebo effects in pain treatment
and research from the existing literature, with emphasis on their magnitude and duration, the
conditions influencing them, and proposed explanations. Data Sources.—English-language …

The power of placebos has long been recognized for improving numerous medical
conditions such as Parkinson9s disease (PD). Little is known, however, about the
mechanism underlying the placebo effect. Using the ability of endogenous dopamine to …

Objective To investigate whether placebo effects can experimentally be separated into the
response to three components—assessment and observation, a therapeutic ritual (placebo
treatment), and a supportive patient-practitioner relationship—and then progressively …

We provide a new perspective with which to understand what for a half century has been
known as the “placebo effect.” We argue that, as currently used, the concept includes much
that has nothing to do with placebos, confusing the most interesting and important aspects of …

For many years, placebos have been defined by their inert content and their use as controls
in clinical trials and treatments in clinical practice. Recent research shows that placebo
effects are genuine psychobiological events attributable to the overall therapeutic context …

OBJECTIVE: Administration of placebo can result in a clinical response indistinguishable
from that seen with active antidepressant treatment. Functional brain correlates of this
phenomenon have not been fully characterized. METHOD: Changes in brain glucose …

Ever since [ship physician] Stephen Maturin had grown rich with their first prize [about 1790]
he had constantly laid in great quantities of asafetida, castoreum and other substances, to
make his medicines more revolting in taste, smell and texture than any others in the fleet; …

We often and wrongly equate the response seen in the placebo arm of a clinical trial with the
placebo effect. In order to obtain the true placebo effect, other non-specific effects can be
identified by including an untreated control group in clinical trials. A review of the literature …

1Department of Neuroscience, University of Turin Medical School, 10125 Turin, Italy,
2Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
30322, 3Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027 …