Dr. Luana Colloca: Placebo analgesia: Elucidating the neurobiological mechanisms

Date/Time 

05/22/2015 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location 

Maryland Neuroimaging Center

University of Maryland

8077 Greenmead Dr. 

College Park, MD  20742

Description 

Placebo analgesia: Elucidating the neurobiological mechanisms

 

Professor Luana Colloca, M.D., Ph.D.

University of Maryland Baltimore

 

 

Abstract

This talk will touch on neurobiological mechanisms that are central to pain modulation such as placebo analgesia. Incorporating behavioral, pharmacological, and functional MRI approaches, Luana Colloca will show how and where placebo analgesia is formed in humans. Her recent substantial laboratory research hints at different learning mechanisms regulating the formation of placebo analgesia.

Biography

Luana Colloca received her MD degree from the University of Catanzaro, Medical School and holds both a master degree in Bioethics and a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Turin in Italy. She completed a post-doc fellowship at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden and a senior research fellowship at the National Institute of Health. Prof. Colloca has over 10 years of experience in the area of pain modulation and placebo effects. Her research focuses on how expectations and different types of learning mechanisms shape experience-driven placebo and nocebo effects.

Luana has authored more than 55 original articles, well-cited in the biomedical literature and published in journals such as Nature Neurosci, JAMA, J Neuro, BMJ, and Pain.  She also co-edited three books for Elsevier, JHP, and Lambert Press respectively on the neurophysiological and translational aspects of the placebo and nocebo effects.

Optional Readings

Colloca L.  Placebo, nocebo, and learning mechanisms. Handb Exp Pharmacol. 2014;225:17-35

 

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