Research Hit: How Your Beliefs Influence Brain Responses

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 and participants were told they they contained low, mid, or high levels of nicotine (when in fact they all contained none). These participants were then put into brain scanners and they conducted fMRI scans while they did various tasks and their brain activation patterns recorded. Specifically they looked for activation signatures in the scans known to be correlated to nicotine activation in the brain.
For example, the thalamus is an important nicotine binding site in the brain (and a major hub) and it was activated, suprisingly, to dose dependent levels.

So the placebo affected this hub in dose dependent ways?!

Yes, amazing, eh! The response could be neatly matched to the dose level of the placebo - remember this had no active nicotine in all three situations. Those who had been told the product contained low doses had a low response, those told a mid level of nicotine had a middling response, and those told there was a high dose had a high brain response (on average).

That’s amazing so the placebo does lead to biological different responses?

Yes, it is important to understand that this on one hand is “psychological” but this is driven by biology. The brain was responding differently, actually simulating having had nicotine.

But how can this work?

There are numerous ways that placebo works but one way is something I have mentioned in previous posts. For example in Surprise! Your Brain Is A Prediction Machine Not A Thinking Machine I reported on a study that showed how the brain sees what it expects to see. I noted there that the brain is a prediction machine - this is a major principle of neurobiology. The brain builds a working model of the world and to operate in real time it needs to respond rapidly, seamlessly to the environment. It therefore predicts what will happen next and as noted in the above post, builds that model - unless there is a surprise or strong contrasting information.
This is not just limited to nicotine by the way: I recently read a review of the placebo effect in a sports science publication - and here they also noted just how effective placebos were in improving sports performance. Normally along two dimensions: performance improves, and subjective feeling of discomfort and exertion reduces. Not bad: perform better and also feel better.
But what is maybe even more fascinating, this effect was also present when participants knew they were taking a placebo. So, knowingly taking a placebo, an inert substance, is still effective in improving sports performance!

But if this is the case, can’t beliefs then impact everything in life?!

Indeed, that is a big messy area but yes, if we have a belief system then it is likely to trigger and stimulate a certain network and this, as we have seen in the above experiments will activate relevant networks.

So, be careful of what you believe in!

Or select your beliefs to suit the best outcomes for you!

Oh right - that sounds better! Can this be used for everything?

No, only those that are dependent on beliefs or have a strong psychological aspect. For example pain is particularly responsive to placebo because there is a strong brain and psychological interpretation/expectation to it. Similarly, in the above-mentioned sports performance levels, discomfort can be very subjective. In medicine therefore it is well known that placebo is very effective for pain, but completely ineffective in treating cancer - but it may have some positive knock on effects such as lowering stress and building emotional resilience.

So when it’s psychological and not physiological

Yes, that said another recent piece of research showed that wounds heal faster when participants felt that more time had passed - i.e. time perception seemed to speed up wound healing!

Really?!

Yes, but let’s leave that for a deeper review another time. For now we know that placebo is also dose dependent and we would be well advised to use this and use our beliefs to stimulate our brains in more beneficial ways.

By Andy Habermacher of Leading Brains
Photocredit: Pexels

For coaching support - Get in touch with Suzie Doscher