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

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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Neuroengineering meets neuroethics to address treatment-resistant depression

___________________ Is This the Future of Men­tal Health? (USC Viter­bi School of Engi­neer­ing): “Brain–machine inter­faces (BMIs) pro­vide a direct path­way to the brain to trans­late brain sig­nals into actions … Below, Shanechi (Note: Maryam Shanechi, PhD, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal and com­put­er engi­neer­ing) answers some ques­tions about her work and what the future might hold…

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Belén Guerra-Carrillo to speak about Cognition, Learning and How to Conduct a 200,000-participant Study at the 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit

Proud to con­firm a new excel­lent Speak­er @ 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (Decem­ber 5–7th). Belén Guer­ra-Car­ril­­lo is an NSF fel­low and a doc­tor­al stu­dent at UC Berke­ley in Prof. Sil­via Bunge’s Build­ing Blocks of Cog­ni­tion Lab. She is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the neur­al and cog­ni­tive mech­a­nisms that give rise to changes that occur as a result of…

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To boost creativity, combine systematic daily effort with diverse emotional states

Map­ping Cre­ativ­i­ty in the Brain (The Atlantic): “The writer Edith Whar­ton, a self-pro­fessed “slow work­er,” dis­missed the idea of easy cre­ative tri­umph. “Many peo­ple assume that the artist receives, at the out­set of his career, the mys­te­ri­ous sealed orders known as ‘Inspi­ra­tion,’ and has only to let that sov­er­eign impulse car­ry him where it will,”…

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