Placebo effect in the spine and mind

It’s not all in the mind – the so-called placebo effect is real and reaches right down to the spine, say German scientists.

The finding, which appears in the journal?Science, may help in the hunt for better ways to tackle pain and other disorders.

The placebo effect is particularly strong when treating central nervous system conditions

Using modern imaging technology the researchers found that simply believing a pain treatment is effective actually dampens pain signalling in a region of the spinal cord called the dorsal horn, suggesting a powerful biological mechanism is at work.

“It is deeply rooted in very, very early areas of the central nervous system. That definitely speaks for a strong effect,” says lead researcher Falk Eippert of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.

Eippert and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to study changes in spinal cord activity.

They applied painful heat to the arms of 15 healthy men and compared the spinal cord responses when they thought they had been treated with either an anaesthetic cream or a placebo.

Both creams, in fact, were inactive but the fMRI scans showed nerve activity was reduced significantly when subjects believed they were getting the anaesthetic.

Strong effect

The ability of sham medicines with no active ingredient to produce real clinical benefits has long perplexed doctors and frustrated drugmakers.

Patients are typically given either an experimental drug or a dummy in clinical trials and the fact that those on placebo often get better, too, makes it hard to determine whether a new drug is working.

The placebo effect is particularly strong when treating central nervous system conditions, like depression and pain.

Traditionally, experts have viewed the effect as psychological, but the new German research is the latest in a growing body of evidence that there is an important physical component.

Just what turns down pain signalling in the spine when a placebo is given is unclear, although Eippert suspects a range of chemicals including natural opioids, noradrenaline and serotonin may be involved.

Eippert and colleagues say their work “opens up new avenues for assessing the efficacy and possible site of action of new treatments for various forms of pain, including chronic pain”.

The word placebo comes from the Latin for ‘I shall please’.

Original news article link – ABC Science News

It would be interesting to see the MRIs they have been taking to pinpoint the actual location of the electrical activity – is it coming from a particular chakra or nervous system hub?

Solar system surrounded by bright ribbon

A bright ribbon of hydrogen atoms marks the edge of the solar system, where the Sun’s wind meets emissions from the rest of the galaxy, US researchers report.

Launched last October, IBEX has already has produced stunning results, say scientists

The results come from the Interstellar Boundary Explorer spacecraft (IBEX), the latest in NASA’s series of low-cost, rapidly developed space missions.

Launched last October it has already has produced stunning results, say scientists.

They used telescopes aboard the orbiting or IBEX to look toward the heliopause, which is the boundary where solar wind meets galactic wind at the edge of the solar system beyond Pluto.

Researchers combined images from IBEX with data from the Cassini spacecraft, near Saturn. They say the results, which appear in the latest issue of?Science, are changing their ideas about what this border area looks like.

“The IBEX results are truly remarkable, with emissions not resembling any of the current theories or models of this never-before-seen region,” David McComas of theSouthwest Research Institute in San Antonio, who led the research.

“We expected to see small, gradual spatial variations at the interstellar boundary, some ten billion miles (16 billion km) away.

“IBEX is showing us a very narrow ribbon that is two to three times brighter than anything else in the sky.”

Big picture

Scientists have long been keen to gain greater understanding of the heliosphere, described by NASA as a ‘giant bubble’ that protects the solar system from high-energy cosmic rays.

They are particularly eager to learn more about the invisible boundary of our solar system and dust and gas that fills the area between the stars, referred to as interstellar medium.

The interstellar medium is created in part by the interaction between the solar wind — charged particles continuously traveling at supersonic speeds away from the Sun in all directions.

The two Voyager spacecraft, the robotic space probes sent to the outer solar system and beyond, have in the past provided data about more localised parts of the interstellar boundary region, but NASA officials say IBEX is helping fill in the “big picture” of what the space boundary looks like.

Original Article link – ABC Science News

It looks a lot like an aura to me in that photo.