The placebo response: How words and rituals change the patient’s brain

Benedetti et al's "The Placebo effect" is a step into the Ben Goldacre-y side of things that even the most reluctantly academically keen medical student reads in their spare time. As the paper notes:
"The placebo effect, or response, has evolved from being thought of as a nuisance in clinical and
pharmacological research to a biological phenomenon worthy of scientific investigation in its own right."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3055515/pdf/npp201081a.pdf

Juicy things that the paper looks into are:

1. The effect of wording on the placebo effect (and other aspects of the pomp and circumstance surrounding administration)
2. The fascinatingly paradoxical world of administering a drug without any effect in the area suggested it would, but instead having an effect which interferes with the suspected messengers in the placebo effect itself.
3. The suspected anatomical regions involved.
4. The dark art of analgesia.
5. The relationship between placebos and the neurology of emotion.
6. An ending which gives hints as how better to use the placebo effect in clinical medicine or in trials and to avoid the nocebo effect (the evil twin).

Some of the things discussed in this review are a bit bewildering, because they seem very counter-intuitive, but never-the-less it makes a great read for anyone who wants to know the TRUTH about  something as simple as opioid administration.

Good learning,

Marblecake