ArticleTranslational psychiatry2018
Prefrontal expectancy and reinforcement-driven antidepressant placebo effects.
Article in Translational psychiatry, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 26 citations in OpenAlex.
- Parenteral clomipramine for depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Acta neuropsychiatrica · 2026Pooled it
- Functional Neuroimaging Correlates of Placebo Response in Patients With Depressive or Anxiety Disorders: A Systematic Review.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Pooled it
- A systematic review of fMRI neurofeedback reporting and effects in clinical populations.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2020Pooled it
- A Guide to Literature Informed Decisions in the Design of Real Time fMRI Neurofeedback Studies: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- Effect of naltrexone pretreatment on ketamine-induced glutamatergic activity and symptoms of depression: a randomized crossover study.Nature medicine · 2025Trial
- μ Opioid Antagonist Naltrexone Partially Abolishes the Antidepressant Placebo Effect and Reduces Orbitofrontal Cortex Encoding of Reinforcement.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2021Trial
- Subjective regulation success mediates the influence of neurofeedback performance on mood in the absence of training effects.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Generalizable structure-function covariation predictive of antidepressant response revealed by target-oriented multimodal fusion.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- Placebo treatment entails resource-dependent downregulation of negative inputs.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Optimizing Antidepressant Efficacy: Generalizable Multimodal Neuroimaging Biomarkers for Prediction of Treatment Response.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Opioid Mechanisms and the Treatment of Depression.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2024Review
- Article
- Nocebo effects in visceral pain: concept and design of the experimental randomized-controlled pain study 'NoVis'.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Deceiving Research Participants: Is It Inconsistent With Valid Consent?The Journal of medicine and philosophy · 2022Article
- The opioid system in depression.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Review
- The placebo and nocebo effects in functional urology.Nature reviews. Urology · 2022Review
- Article
- Understanding the Neurocomputational Mechanisms of Antidepressant Placebo Effects.Journal of psychiatry and brain science · 2021Article
- Research Review: Brain network connectivity and the heterogeneity of depression in adolescence - a precision mental health perspective.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2020Review
- [The role of placebo and nocebo mechanisms in depressive diseases and their treatment].Der Nervenarzt · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Placebo responses in depression exemplify how expectancies and appraisals impact mood. Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying these responses are still poorly understood, partly due to the difficulty of simulating antidepressant effects and manipulating mood experimentally. To address these challenges, we developed an acute antidepressant placebo experiment involving the intravenous administration of a "fast-acting antidepressant" and a trial-by-trial sham fMRI "neurofeedback" manipulation, purporting to reveal mood-relevant neural responses. Twenty volunteers with major depression underwent this experiment while rating their expected and actual mood improvement. Mixed-effects analyses of trial-by-trial ratings revealed that the "drug" infusion cues induced higher expectancies of mood improvement, while both the "drug" infusion cue and the sham neurofeedback induced a reported mood improvement. Neurofeedback of greater magnitude, compared to lower magnitude, recruited the lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC). Individuals with greater lPFC responses to neurofeedback displayed: (1) greater effect of previous mood improvement on expectancy ratings and (2) greater effect of sham neurofeedback on mood improvement. Behavioral antidepressant placebo effects were additionally moderated by changes in peripheral β-endorphin plasma levels and depressive symptomatology. These data demonstrate the feasibility of trial-by-trial manipulation of antidepressant placebo-associated expectancies and their reinforcement. We provide initial insights into the role of the lPFC in the interplay between placebo-induced expectancies and mood, as well as preliminary evidence for the role of the opioid system in antidepressant placebo effects.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.