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Placebo-Effect

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

August 27, 2020 by Alvaro Fernandez

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 to increase AD risk in the most com­pre­hen­sive evi­dence review to date,
  • Five are “neck up:” Low­er edu­ca­tion lev­el, Low­er cog­ni­tive activ­i­ty, Head trau­ma, Repeat­ed episodes of depres­sion, High-lev­els of long-term stress.
  • Five are “neck down:” Hyper­ten­sion in mid-life, Ortho­sta­t­ic hypoten­sion, Dia­betes, High BMI, High lev­els of homo­cys­teine. Sys­tem­at­ic review finds ten lifestyle fac­tors that clear­ly impact the prob­a­bil­i­ty of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD)

#3. “The health­i­est peo­ple are the ones who grow with age and expe­ri­ence; even in times of trou­ble like these.” — Dhar­ma Singh Khal­sa, MD, Pres­i­dent of the Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion. On Stress, Yoga Med­i­ta­tion, and The Evo­lu­tion Revolution

#4. “Accep­tance that Alzheimer’s dis­ease is a lifestyle dis­ease, lit­tle dif­fer­ent from oth­er age-relat­ed dis­eases, that is the sum of a life­time is the most impor­tant break­through of the decade.” — George Per­ry, PhD, Edi­tor-in-Chief of the Jour­nal of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. High­er body mass index (BMI) linked to low­er blood sup­ply to the brain in large neu­roimag­ing study

#5. “Atten­tion is a scarce resource. Think about your atten­tion­al focus as the beam of a light. If the light is on an object it can­not be on oth­er objects at the same time with the same inten­si­ty … Although we typ­i­cal­ly have the feel­ing that mul­ti­task­ing saves us time, it is often not the case.” Sim­ple, quick brain teas­er to test the lim­its of multitasking

#6. If it appears to rotate, RT ? Fun opti­cal illu­sion to tease your mind

#7. Every cloud has a sil­ver lin­ing: How and when will the telemed­i­cine surge reach men­tal healthcare?

#8. Not a minute too soon: Mag­el­lan Health is test­ing biofeed­back videogame Might­i­er to help chil­dren bet­ter self-reg­u­late stress

#9. “In a time when emo­tions like stress, anx­i­ety, bore­dom, and anger are hard to avoid, a new study sug­gests that a par­tic­u­lar med­i­ta­tion prac­tice can help us face them.” Study: Med­i­ta­tion prac­tice, both for­mal and infor­mal, helps devel­op equa­nim­i­ty over time

#10. Ever since dis­cov­er­ing Bar­bara Arrow­smith-Young’s life tra­jec­to­ry via Nor­main Doidge’s fan­tas­tic book The Brain That Changes Itself, we have been impressed by her cre­ativ­i­ty, sta­mi­na and courage. Com­ing soon: Vir­tu­al World Tour at the fron­tier of applied neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, edu­ca­tion and learn­ing difficulties

#11. “Neur­al sig­nals will be used to devel­op algo­rithms that will help researchers deter­mine the opti­mal brain state under which indi­vid­u­als can receive infor­ma­tion. From there, the team will deter­mine the most effec­tive means of enhanc­ing the sub­jects’ abil­i­ty to intake and process infor­ma­tion. This could range from non-inva­sive neuromodulation—or brain stimulation—techniques to the use of aug­ment­ed real­i­ty to alter per­ceived envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions.” Air Force announces research plat­form to har­ness closed-loop neu­rotech­nol­o­gy and accel­er­ate learn­ing “on the fly”

#12. Good to hear that “ensur­ing the pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty of study par­tic­i­pants’ data is a high pri­or­i­ty for both UCLA and Apple. UCLA will process and main­tain study data in a secure envi­ron­ment … UCLA and Apple will ana­lyze the data only after they are cod­ed and stripped of names and oth­er con­tact infor­ma­tion.” UCLA launch­es major men­tal health study col­lect­ing & ana­lyz­ing data from Apple wear­ables to bet­ter under­stand depres­sion and anxiety

#13. Flex­i­bil­i­ty is good except when it isn’t: Study finds how sci­en­tists can reach dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions ana­lyz­ing the same brain scans

#14. “I have so much to accom­plish today that I must med­i­tate for two hours instead of one” — Gand­hi, as quot­ed in Sev­en evi­dence-based rea­sons to start med­i­tat­ing yesterday

Wish­ing you a safe and healthy September,

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on behalf of the Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Alzheimer’s Disease, Apple, attentional focus, Barbara Arrowsmith-Young, brain, brain health, Brain Teasers, brain-teaser, meditation, mental healthcare, neural signals, neuroimaging, neuromodulation, Neurotechnology, non-invasive, optical illusion, placebo, Placebo-Effect, research, Stress, tease your mind, telemedicine, UCLA

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

August 13, 2020 by SharpBrains

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 researchers from Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and Dart­mouth Col­lege is the first to demon­strate that place­bos reduce brain mark­ers of emo­tion­al dis­tress even when peo­ple know they are tak­ing one. [Read more…] about Study: The place­bo effect works even when peo­ple know they are tak­ing a placebo

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: active ingredient, clinical disorders, neural, neural measure, neuroplasticity, non-deceptive, non-deceptive placebos, placebo, Placebo-Effect, psychobiological, sugar-pill

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

July 22, 2015 by SharpBrains

CBT

.

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 get­ting less effec­tive over time. [Read more…] about Study: Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py helps treat depression–especially among women–but ben­e­fits are declin­ing steadily

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: cognitive-behavioral-therapy, depression, depression-treatment, depressive disorders, Placebo-Effect, Psychotherapy

Research: Could studying the placebo effect change the way we think about medicine?

December 8, 2011 by SharpBrains

The Pow­er of Noth­ing: Could study­ing the place­bo effect change the way we think about med­i­cine? (The New Yorker):

“For years, Ted Kaptchuk per­formed acupunc­ture at a tiny clin­ic in Cam­bridge, a few miles from his cur­rent office, at the Har­vard Med­ical School. He opened for busi­ness in 1976, hav­ing just returned from Asia, where he had spent four years hon­ing his craft. Not long after he arrived in Boston, he treat­ed an Armen­ian woman for chron­ic bron­chi­tis. A few weeks lat­er, the woman returned with her hus­band and told Kaptchuk that he had “cured” her.” [Read more…] about Research: Could study­ing the place­bo effect change the way we think about medicine?

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: acupunture, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, brain therapy, Brain-health, bronchitis treatment, Clinical-Trial, Harvard, medicine, nausea, Placebo-Effect, Ted Kaptchuk

Mysteries of Brain and Mind

May 28, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

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: [Read more…] about Mys­ter­ies of Brain and Mind

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: brain, Jill-Bolte-Taylor, mind, mindfulness-meditation, National-Institutes-of-Health, new-york-times, nyt, Obecalp, Placebo-Effect, psychologists, therapy, train-attention

Mind Hacks and the Placebo Effect

March 7, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

Placebo effect, mind hacksIn 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 called “the place­bo effect”. Let’s see what Wikipedia says:

[Read more…] about Mind Hacks and the Place­bo Effect

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: belief, ETech, hack-our-minds, medicines, Mind-Hacks, placebo, Placebo-Effect, sugar-pill, suggestion, therapeutic-effect

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