Research Hit: How Your Beliefs Influence Brain Responses

Brain scans show that the brain responds as if it had received an active substance — and at dose (belief) specific levels.

So are we back to the old, sceptical, observation, of “if you believe it works, it will work”?

Yes, indeed. The placebo effect is indeed powerful and a little mysterious. Many people put it down to “just being in your head”, simply “psychological”. But thoughts are made of chemical interactions in your brain — so a biological process which in turn influences your biology in other ways.

So, don’t underestimate the placebo effect — for if it does work, it does indeed work.

But how well does the Placebo effect work?

Well, this is precisely what a group of researchers around Ofer Perl at Mount Sinai tried to find out. Specifically they investigated the dose specific effects in the brain of a placebo.

What do you mean dose specific?

So similar to giving doses of drugs and getting higher responses, can you give a “higher” level of a placebo and get a higher response?

For this they gave participants in a nicotine dependency study three placebos: these were electronic cigarettes…