Update: The placebo effect works even when people know they are taking a placebo

By Alvaro Fernandez | August 27, 2020

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing 14 research find­ings, resources and tips for brain health … and start­ing with this fas­ci­nat­ing study: #1. Wow. The place­bo effect works even when peo­ple know they are tak­ing a place­bo #2. Beat­ing Alzheimer’s Dis­ease will require a com­bined physical/ men­tal approach: From the ten fac­tors found…

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Study: The placebo effect works even when people know they are taking a placebo

By SharpBrains | August 13, 2020 |

Place­bos Prove Pow­er­ful, Even When Peo­ple Know They’re Tak­ing One, New Study Sug­gests (MSU release): How much of a treat­ment is mind over mat­ter? It is well doc­u­ment­ed that peo­ple often feel bet­ter after tak­ing a treat­ment with­out active ingre­di­ents sim­ply because they believe it’s real — known as the place­bo effect. A team of…

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Study: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps treat depression–especially among women–but benefits are declining steadily

By SharpBrains | July 22, 2015

. Researchers have found that CBT is rough­ly half as effec­tive in treat­ing depres­sion as it used to be (The Guardian): “Every­body loves cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py. It’s the no-non­sense, quick and rel­a­tive­ly cheap approach to men­tal suffering…So it was unset­tling to learn, from a paper in the jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Bul­letin, that it seems to be…

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Mysteries of Brain and Mind

By Alvaro Fernandez | May 28, 2008 |

Sev­er­al recent NYT arti­cles focus on sev­er­al fas­ci­nat­ing fron­tiers of brain sci­ence. We know much more about brain and mind than only 20 years ago, yet expo­nen­tial­ly less than 20 years from now. A few wor­thy explo­rations on mind­ful­ness, per­cep­tu­al capac­i­ties, and the pow­er of placebo:

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Mind Hacks and the Placebo Effect

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 7, 2008

In the ETech pan­el a few days ago, we dis­cussed some futur­is­tic and some emerg­ing ways in which we can “hack our minds”, most­ly from a tech­nol­o­gy point of view. Nei­ther myself nor the oth­er pan­elists thought of sug­gest­ing the most obvi­ous and inex­pen­sive method, proven in thou­sands of research stud­ies. The secret com­pound?: Belief. Also…

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