Ask the Experts: Is there a place for placebo analgesia in everyday clinical practice?

Fabrizio Benedetti, MD is Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Turin Medical School and at the National Institute of Neuroscience, Turin, Italy. He is a nominated member of The Academy of Europe and the European Dana Alliance for the Brain. He was consultant of the Placebo Project at the NIH and member of the six-strong Placebo Study Group at Harvard University (MA, USA), and held positions at the University of California (CA, USA) and the University of Texas (TX, USA). He identified some basic mechanisms of placebo responses across a variety of medical conditions, such as the involvement of endogenous opioids in placebo analgesia and of cholecystokinin in nocebo hyperalgesia, as well as the neuronal circuit that is affected by placebos in Parkinson's disease. He is author of the book Placebo Effects (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2008), which received the Highly Commended Book Award of the British Medical Association, and The Patient's Brain (Oxford University Press 2010).