Researchers used their network mapping technique to identify specific brain circuits underlying the response to sham surgery in Parkinson’s disease patients participating in a gene therapy trial. The expression of this network measured under blinded conditions correlated with the sham subjects’ clinical outcome; the network changes were reversed when the subjects learned of their sham treatment status. Finally, an individual subject’s network expression value measured before the treatment predicted his/her subsequent blinded response to sham treatment. This suggests that this novel image-based measure of the sham-related network can help to reduce the number of subjects assigned to sham treatment in randomized clinical trials for brain disorders by excluding those subjects who are more likely to display placebo effects under blinded conditions.

via Feinstein Institute researchers identify brain network | Science Codex.