Brainpower The Best Medicine?

New Research Shows Expecting Benefit From Drugs Can Help Healing

(AP)  "Our brain really is on drugs when we get a placebo," says co-researcher Christian Stohler, now at the University of Maryland. More remarkable, some especially strong placebo responders suggest "many brains can actually stimulate that (pain-relief) system more."

Italy's Benedetti gave Parkinson's patients a placebo and measured the electrical activity of individual nerve cells in a movement-controlling part of the brain. Those neurons quieted down, a decrease in firing of about 40 percent that correlated with a reduction in patients' muscle rigidity — they moved more easily.

To further prove the power of belief, Benedetti hooked pain patients to a computerized morphine injection system. Sometimes the computer administered a dose without them knowing it; sometimes a nurse pretended to give it. The morphine was up to 50 percent more effective when patients knew it was coming.

Likewise, Parkinson's patients moved much better when they were told that doctors had turned on a pacemaker-like implant in their brains, which blocks tremors, than when it was turned on covertly.

But in a similar experiment with Alzheimer's patients suffering pain, Benedetti found no difference between covert or expected dosing.

The results are preliminary, he cautioned a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience last month. But it appears that because Alzheimer's robs patients of the cognitive ability to expect a benefit, they need higher doses of painkillers to get as much relief as non-demented patients.

Placebos aren't a substitute for real medicine. But the research suggests maybe doctors should try to manipulate patients' treatment expectations, for at least some hard-to-treat conditions.

"The bigger question is how do we capitalize on the placebo effect," said Dr. Helen Mayberg of Emory University, whose studies suggest some antidepressants have a "placebo-plus" activity in the brain. "There may be a phenomenon we all have access to."