Luana Colloca

Dr. Luana Colloca is an NIH-funded faculty at the University of Maryland Baltimore. Dr. Colloca holds an MD, a master degree in Bioethics and a PhD in Neuroscience and completed a post-doc training at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden and a senior research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA.

Dr. Colloca has conducted pioneering ground-breaking studies that have advanced scientific understanding of the psychoneurobiological bases of endogenous systems for pain modulation in humans including the discovery that the vasopressin system is involved in the enhancement of placebo effects with a dimorphic effect. Currently, her team conducts basic and translational research on orofacial chronic pain, brain mechanisms of expectancy- and observationally-induced hypoalgesia, and immersive virtual reality. She is internationally renewed as a leading scientist for neurobiological mechanisms of descending pain modulation, placebo and nocebo effects using an integrative approach including psychopharmacological, neurobiological and behavioral approaches. Her research has been published in top-ranked international journals including Biological Psychiatry, Pain, Nature Neuroscience, JAMA, Lancet Neurology, Science and NEJM. The impact of her innovative work is clear from her outstanding publications, citation rate and numerous invited lectures worldwide. Her research has been also featured on The National Geographic, The New Scientist, Washington Post, Science daily, Boston Globe, The New Yorker, Nature, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, News and World Reports and USA Today. Dr. Colloca has been recently honored with prestigious awards including the 2016 Wall Patrick International Award for basic research on pain mechanisms by the International Association for Study of Pain (IASP).