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Placebo pp 139–147Cite as

Great Expectations: The Placebo Effect in Parkinson’s Disease

Part of the Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology book series (HEP,volume 225)

Abstract

Our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying the placebo effect has increased exponentially in parallel with the advances in brain imaging. This is of particular importance in the field of Parkinson’s disease, where clinicians have described placebo effects in their patients for decades. Significant placebo effects have been observed in clinical trials for medications as well as more invasive surgical trials including deep-brain stimulation and stem-cell implantation. In addition to placebo effects occurring as a byproduct of randomized controlled trials, investigation of the placebo effect itself in the laboratory setting has further shown the capacity for strong placebo effects within this patient population. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that placebos stimulate the release of dopamine in the striatum of patients with Parkinson’s disease and can alter the activity of dopamine neurons using single-cell recording. When taken together with the findings from other medical conditions discussed elsewhere in this publication, a unified mechanism for the placebo effect in Parkinson’s disease is emerging that blends expectation-induced neurochemical changes and disease-specific nigrostriatal dopamine release.

Keywords

  • Placebo effect
  • Parkinson's disease
  • Expectation
  • Dopamine and reward

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neurology Residency Program, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Sarah Christine Lidstone

Authors
  1. Sarah Christine Lidstone
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Correspondence to Sarah Christine Lidstone .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Neuroscience Department and National Institute of Neuroscience Labs, University of Turin Medical School, Turin, Italy

    Fabrizio Benedetti

  2. Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Hospitals Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany

    Paul Enck

  3. Neuroscience Department and National Institute of Neuroscience Labs, University of Turin Medical School, Turin, Italy

    Elisa Frisaldi

  4. Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Immunobiology, University Hospital Essen, Essen, Germany

    Manfred Schedlowski

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© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Lidstone, S.C. (2014). Great Expectations: The Placebo Effect in Parkinson’s Disease. In: Benedetti, F., Enck, P., Frisaldi, E., Schedlowski, M. (eds) Placebo. Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, vol 225. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44519-8_8

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