There have been a variety of efforts to find ways to use the placebo effect as a real medical treatment in the last decade or so...
or Parkinson’s patients, medication can be a double-edged sword: It can beat back the symptoms of the disease, allowing a patient to move or talk more freely, but it can also cause severe vomiting, dizziness, and low blood pressure to the point of passing out.
Now, as reported in the Journal of Physiology on Tuesday, researchers in Italy may have found a way to harness the benefits of Parkinson’s drugs while reducing their side effects.
It didn’t require modifying the drugs. Instead, the therapeutic trick involved training a patient’s neurons as if they were lab rats or dogs hoping for a treat.
Give a dog a bone every time you come into the room, and it will start salivating as soon as you cross the threshold. The same may be true of a neuron, it turns out.
If it gets the neurotransmitter equivalent of a cup of coffee every time, an injection to the body, it will start perking up even if the syringe contains nothing but saline solution.
“Neurons can learn to respond to placebos.