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Expect the Best? Placebos Are for You!: Scientific American

Expect the Best? Placebos Are for You!: Scientific American

Expect the Best? Placebos Are for You!
New study links expectations of rewards to placebo effect
By Nikhil Swaminathan

HELPS IF YOU'RE OPTIMISTIC: New research finds that people who expect rewards in a gambling game also tend to feel a more pronounced placebo effect during pain tests.

Individual expectations of rewards may explain why some people feel better after receiving fake drug treatments—a phenomenon known as "the placebo effect."

A new study using different brain imaging techniques linked the intensity of an individual's individual placebo effect to the amount of dopamine (a neurotransmitter involved in the pleasure and reward pathway) released in a midbrain region called the nucleus accumbens. Researchers at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor specifically demonstrated that those who were more responsive to phony pills were also more likely to expect to win big in a gambling game.

"If you have the capacity to respond to reward, then you have the placebo effect," says neuroscientist and radiologist Jon-Kar Zubieta, senior author of the new study published this week in Neuron.
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