an evolutionary crack at the placebo effect

[Almo]

I thought some people here might enjoy this. Imagine what we could learn about our minds if we understood the placebo effect.

Evolution could explain the placebo effect

Your mind may be able to switch your immune response into high gear, with a placebo as the trigger, a new evolutionary model suggests

www.newscientist.com

 

[Vodsel]

Thanks for the link.

The observation that the resources used for an immune response are dosed for an optimal performance sure makes evolutionary sense. However, saying that evidence "suggests that the immune system has an on-off switch controlled by the mind" is dead obvious, with or without detailed models of the reasons why organisms would work like that. The big question of how does that switch work, as you suggest.

The headline, "Evolution could explain the placebo effect", as usual with press releases, is far-fetched. Evolution can explain why that type of response is a good strategy, but explaining the mechanism itself is another story.

 

[Entropymancer]

Radiolab provides some good food for thought (nestled in an interesting auditory landscape) as always: Radiolab - Placebo

 

[d*l*b]

Brain Science Podcast had an interesting show on placebo a while ago—

Neurobiology of Placebos with Fabrizio Benedetti (BSP 77)

Dr. Fabrizio Benedetti is one of the world's leading researchers of the neurobiology of placebos. In a recent interview (BSP 77) he explained to me that he believes that "today we are in a very good position to describe, from a biological and from an evolutionary approach, the doctor-patient relationship, and the placebo effect, itself."

To appreciate Dr. Benedetti's work one must first realize that his approach differs from that of the typical clinical trial. As he observed, "To the clinical trialist, a placebo effect means any improvement which may take place after placebo administration. To the neurobiologist, a placebo response, or placebo effect means only something active in the brain happening after placebo administration: learning, anxiety reduction, activation of reward mechanisms."

In contrast, he explains "The real placebo response, the real placebo effect is a psychobiological phenomenon. It is something active happening in the brain after placebo administration: like learning, like anxiety reduction, and such like." Brain Science Podcast 77 provides an introduction to this complex, but fascinating topic.