How exactly the placebo effect works is still a mystery, but neuroscientist Luana Colloca is working to find the answers in order to change the way we treat pain
For a phenomenon that has been known about for hundreds of years, there is still much to learn about the– when a person’s health improves after taking a dummy treatment like a sugar pill. It is thought that the expectation of a positive outcome is behind it, and that a negative expectation is involved in its unwelcome opposite, the nocebo effect, which is when symptoms worsen.
A neuroscientist and the director of the Placebo Beyond Opinions Center at the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore, Colloca and her colleagues have shown how specific gene variants can shape the extent of someone’s placebo response. They are now looking into how best to harness such effects to help soothe pain, which could decrease the use of prescriptionand the risk of addiction to them.