No evidence for an acute placebo effect on emotional processing in healthy volunteers

Placebo-controlled trials are the gold standard measure of efficacy in the development of new treatments for depression. However, the large placebo effects associated with standard measures of subjective symptoms reduce the sensitivity of such trials to detect antidepressant effects. There is a need to develop novel efficacy markers that are resistant to placebo effects. Measures of emotional processing, known to be sensitive to antidepressant...