In this week's episode, we talk about placebos, which are inert "medications" used to compare with active drugs. We talk about how the use of medications that "do nothing" can provide pain relief, change hormone balance int he body, and lower symptoms across a broad variety of diseases.

References:

Beecher, H. K. (1955). The powerful placebo. Journal of the American Medical Association, 159(17), 1602-1606. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/303530

Wager, T. D., & Atlas, L. Y. (2015). The neuroscience of placebo effects: connecting context, learning and health. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(7), 403-418. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3976

Zunhammer, M., Spisák, T., Wager, T. D., & Bingel, U. (2021). Meta-analysis of neural systems underlying placebo analgesia from individual participant fMRI data. Nature communications, 12(1), 1391. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21179-3

Marchant, J. (2016). Placebos: honest fakery. Nature, 535(7611), S14-S15. https://www.nature.com/articles/535S14a

Amanzio, M., & Benedetti, F. (1999). Neuropharmacological dissection of placebo analgesia: expectation-activated opioid systems versus conditioning-activated specific subsystems. Journal of Neuroscience, 19(1), 484-494. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/19/1/484.short

Chen, C., Niehaus, J. K., Dinc, F., Huang, K. L., Barnette, A. L., Tassou, A., ... & Scherrer, G. (2024). Neural circuit basis of placebo pain relief. Nature, 632(8027), 1092-1100. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07816-z