Placebos prove powerful, even when people know they are taking one

How much of a treatment is mind about matter? It is well documented that people often feel better about taking a treatment without active ingredients, simply because they believe it is real – known as the placebo effect.

A team of researchers from Michigan State University, University of Michigan and Dartmouth College is the first to prove that placebos reduce brain markers of emotional anxiety, even when people know they are taking one.

Now, evidence shows that even when people are aware that their treatment is not “real” – known as nondeceptive placebos – believing that it can cure can lead to changes in how the brain responds to emotional information.

“Just think: What if someone took a side-effect-free sugar pill twice a day after going through a short compelling video about the power of placebos and experienced less stress as a result?” said Darwin Guevarra, postdoctoral fellow at MSU and lead author of the study. “These results increase that possibility.”

The new findings, published in the latest edition of the journal Nature communication, test how effective nondeceptive placebos – if, if a person knows they are receiving a placebo – are for reducing emotional brain activity.

“Placebos are all about ‘mind over matter,'” said Jason Moser, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at MSU. “Nondeceptive placebos were born so you could possibly use them in routine practice. So instead of prescribing a lower medication to help a patient, they could give them a placebo, tell them it could help them and chances are – if they believe it. can, then it will. “

To test nondeceptive placebos, the researchers showed two separate groups of people a series of emotional images over two experiments. The unrecognized members of the placebo group read about the effects of placebo and were asked to inhale a saline solution using a nissy spray. They were told that the nasal spray was a placebo that did not contain any active ingredients but would help reduce their negative feelings if they believed it would. The members of the comparison control group also inhaled the same saline spray, but were told that the spray improved the clarity of the physiological readings taken by the researchers.

The first experiment found that the non-receptive placebos reduced participants’ emotional distress. Importantly, the second study showed that nonseptic placebos decreased electrical brain activity, which reflected how much pain someone feels before emotional events, and the decrease in emotional brain activity occurred within just a few seconds.

“These findings provide initial support that nondeseptic placebos are not only a product of responsabias – tell the experimenter what they want to hear – but represent real psychobiological effects,” said Ethan Kross, co-author of the study and a professor of psychology and management at the University of Michigan.