The placebo effect refers to the use of drugs that do not have a chemical composition that objectively counteracts the ailment since they do not contain any active ingredient or to the use of therapeutic procedures that do not exert any objective action on the pathological process; thus, the elimination of pain or healing is a product of the mental effect that implies to imagine that the medication will really work. Or at least that was believed until ...
Researchers from the Medical University of Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany have scanned the spinal cord of volunteers who were given a cream, apparently analgesic, to treat chronic pain in one of the arms. 26% reported less pain in the damaged area although the most unusual result was to observe a variation in the neural activity of the spinal cord that made the pain go away, just as if the medication actually had an active ingredient that acts as an analgesic .
Of course, the 13 volunteers were convinced that the cream was a specialized product because they were told that the objective of the experiment was to test the effectiveness of the cream.
As it usually happens, when the volunteers felt the pain, the corresponding area of the spinal cord was activated, but once they used the cream, this activation gradually diminished.
Another study of similar characteristics, although using less technological resources that would allow it to endorse the results, was carried out in 1999 at the Interuniversity Center for Neurophysiology of Pain at the Medical University of Torino. Neuropsychologists, after studying 229 patients, came to the conclusion that the expectation of pain relief reduces anxiety and produces the release of opiates endogenously.
Now this effect is demonstrated, when the person believes that the placebo drugs are real medicines that can alleviate their ailment would decrease their anxiety and opiates would be released that would calm the pain.
However, the explanation of the phenomenon does not end here and is that a group of researchers from the University of Uppsala in Sweden has proposed that the placebo effect has a genetic basis. The study they developed shows that a variation of the TPH2 gene increases the susceptibility of people to a placebo. A total of 25 people were analyzed, of which the 10 who experienced the placebo effect had a variation in the TPH2 gene that facilitated the regulation of the activity of the amygdala, a crucial area for emotional processing, based on the modulation of the serotonin
Then we could summarize that the placebo effect is based on the expectations and the confidence that the person has in the treatment but this level of confidence and "suggestibility" is not only determined by personological characteristics but also by a genetic variation.
In short, the placebo effect increasingly shows its less psychological aspects to reveal its conditioning at the neurological and genetic levels, demonstrating that human reality is highly complex and multidetermined.
Very clean =)
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Very interesting, this reminded me of Neurophysiology lectures at ULA about pain perception and how the cortex in the anterior cingula allows the brain to percive or make empathy with other people's pain.