The Placebo Effect

We talked about placebos for a little while in the "Psychology of Consciousness" class I'm taking this semester. So far, it's been mostly the various theories that encompass the history of the study of consciousness, but is still sometimes a little too abstract for me. That said, the placebo effect is pretty real and pretty fascinating.



There seems to be a physiological basis for the placebo effect in pain - some neurons of the Raphe nuclei in the brainstem project down to the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, where primary sensory neurons enter on their way up from the body. Those involved in sensing pain make a synapse here, and that's where this effect can act. The Raphe neurons release serotonin to stimulate inhibitory interneurons, which then release enkephalin (an endogenous opioid) directly onto the axons of the pain-sensing neurons before they transmit the signal to the secondary neurons in the pain pathway. So less pain.

But this still doesn't answer the question of how our beliefs can affect the size of the effect, and why that effect is always about half of whatever we believe it should be. And then there's the placebos that are used for things other than just pain (homeopathy, for instance). Do they in fact work better than no treatment at all? And if they do, how? So many questions, so little known.

Interviews are Fun

Interviews for grad school can be nerve-wracking and exhausting. But I cannot deny what an experience it is to talk to all these awesome neuroscientists doing amazing work at the forefront of their fields. Much of this work is probably unpublished, so we get to see all of these questions and answers that are going to show up in the big journals within the next year or two.

If that doesn't excite you to no end, well, grad school might not be the right place for you. But for me, being in this community, with people who are as excited as me about the cool stuff being discovered, is like being on cloud 9. Or maybe cloud 8 (I like the number 8).

There's still the tiredness and the work I have to make up and missing multiple weekends of my last semester at Berkeley. But hearing about cutting edge research (sometimes literally, with electron microscopy), making friends with other recruits on the interview circuit, and getting free food/drink/hotel/airfare (which is honestly the least of it) - so worth it.