On another thread, Steve001 posted a link to a YouTube video about homeopathy. Among other things, it mentioned the placebo effect, and explained it in these terms: "If people believe that something will help them feel better, their trust alone has the desired effect. And it's been proven that the placebo effect can be transferred. Children and animals rely on their parents or keepers and are in tune to their emotions. If a parent has a lot of trust in a treatment and eases up, this can help a child relax and help relieve symptoms. This can also be observed with animals, who react strongly to the body language cues of the people caring for them."
I asked whether there was really any evidence that the placebo effect worked as stated, and whether its operation could actually be explained in conventional terms. I think probably that question deserves its own thread.
There's an interesting article by Maj-Britt Niemi here. It's entitled, "Placebo Effect: A Cure in the Mind", and was originally published in Scientific American Mind in 2009:
http://web.as.uky.edu/statistics/users/rayens/A&S100_Resources/PlaceboStudy.pdf
It suggests that things aren't really as simple as suggested in the voice-over of the video, and that while there are some pointers to how the effect works, the mechanism is far from being understood. For one thing, the article stresses the importance of subconscious factors as well as conscious belief in the treatment. It also emphasises the phenomenon of conditioning, in which - for example - if an active drug is initially administered together with a flavoured drink, and afterwards a placebo is given with the same drink, the therapeutic effect continues (which it does not if the placebo is given with water instead). This has been demonstrated in both animals and humans.
The article also summarises investigations of the mechanism of pain relief, which seems quite complicated. It suggests that when there is a conscious expectation of pain relief, it occurs through the release of opioids that occur naturally in the body. But when conditioning is used, without a conscious expectation of pain relief, opioids don't seem to be involved - "the conditioned effect ... seems to work in the same manner as whatever analgesic is used in the conditioning". And to complicate factors further, there is evidence that when there is a conscious expectation of pain relief, there is a suppression of activity in areas of the brain that sense pain. There seems to be very little about the actual mechanisms by which any of this happens. The mechanism seems particularly difficult to imagine in the case of a flavoured drink mimicking the chemical effect of an analgesic after conditioning - but maybe that's just due to my ignorance ...
I asked whether there was really any evidence that the placebo effect worked as stated, and whether its operation could actually be explained in conventional terms. I think probably that question deserves its own thread.
There's an interesting article by Maj-Britt Niemi here. It's entitled, "Placebo Effect: A Cure in the Mind", and was originally published in Scientific American Mind in 2009:
http://web.as.uky.edu/statistics/users/rayens/A&S100_Resources/PlaceboStudy.pdf
It suggests that things aren't really as simple as suggested in the voice-over of the video, and that while there are some pointers to how the effect works, the mechanism is far from being understood. For one thing, the article stresses the importance of subconscious factors as well as conscious belief in the treatment. It also emphasises the phenomenon of conditioning, in which - for example - if an active drug is initially administered together with a flavoured drink, and afterwards a placebo is given with the same drink, the therapeutic effect continues (which it does not if the placebo is given with water instead). This has been demonstrated in both animals and humans.
The article also summarises investigations of the mechanism of pain relief, which seems quite complicated. It suggests that when there is a conscious expectation of pain relief, it occurs through the release of opioids that occur naturally in the body. But when conditioning is used, without a conscious expectation of pain relief, opioids don't seem to be involved - "the conditioned effect ... seems to work in the same manner as whatever analgesic is used in the conditioning". And to complicate factors further, there is evidence that when there is a conscious expectation of pain relief, there is a suppression of activity in areas of the brain that sense pain. There seems to be very little about the actual mechanisms by which any of this happens. The mechanism seems particularly difficult to imagine in the case of a flavoured drink mimicking the chemical effect of an analgesic after conditioning - but maybe that's just due to my ignorance ...
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