Placebo Effects: Understanding the mechanisms in health and disease
Fabrizio Benedetti
Abstract
One of the most widespread words in medicine is the placebo and placebo effect, although it is not always clear what it means exactly. Recent progress in biomedical research has allowed a better clarification of the placebo effect. This is an active psychobiological phenomenon which takes place in the patient's brain and that is capable of influencing both the course of a disease and the response to a therapy. The psychosocial context around the patient is crucial to placebo effects, for example the doctor's words and attitudes, and this may have a profound impact on the patient's brain which, ... More
One of the most widespread words in medicine is the placebo and placebo effect, although it is not always clear what it means exactly. Recent progress in biomedical research has allowed a better clarification of the placebo effect. This is an active psychobiological phenomenon which takes place in the patient's brain and that is capable of influencing both the course of a disease and the response to a therapy. The psychosocial context around the patient is crucial to placebo effects, for example the doctor's words and attitudes, and this may have a profound impact on the patient's brain which, in turn, may affect several physiological functions of the body. This book emphasizes that there is not a single placebo effect but many. The book critically reviews them in different medical conditions, such as pain, neurological disorders, psychiatric and behavioural disorders, immune and endocrine systems, cardiovascular and respiratory systems, gastrointestinal and genitourinary disorders, as well as some special conditions, such as oncology, surgery, sports medicine, and acupuncture.
Keywords:
placebo,
nocebo,
biological mechanisms,
psychosocial context,
expectation,
conditioning,
learning,
disease,
therapeutic intervention
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199559121 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2009 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559121.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Fabrizio Benedetti, author
Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience, University of Turin Medical School, Turin, Italy and National Institute of Neuroscience, Turin, Italy
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