Placebo Effect's Neural Activity Photographed for First Time

Researchers used fMRI scans to spot the placebo effect at work in specific spinal cord cells Medicine has increasingly looked to the placebo effect's seemingly mysterious power to make people feel better in the absence of painkillers or pharmaceutical drugs. Now researchers have used fMRI scanners to pinpoint specific cells in the spinal cord that they believe are responsible for this ability to deaden pain. A part of the spinal cord near the lower neck, called the dorsal horn, normally lights up with pain response. But no pain-related neural activity showed when researchers applied a so-called painkiller cream, which in fact was a placebo containing no active medication. An independent neuroscientist hailed the study as the most direct test of the placebo effect's pain-relieving properties to date. It also represents a first for researchers using fMRI to capture the placebo effect's neural activity in the spinal cord. The...

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