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Placebo effect involves unexpected brain regions

By tracing the neural circuits that are active when mice anticipate pain relief, neuroscientists find that the placebo effect involves the cerebellum and brain stem — areas that typically mediate ‘lower’ brain functions.
  1. Jeffrey S. Mogil

    1. Jeffrey S. Mogil is at the Departments of Psychology and Anesthesia, Faculties of Science, Medicine, and Dental Medicine, and Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B1, Canada.

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The placebo effect — in which the mere expectation of a biological effect can produce that effect — is the oldest and still one of the most effective medical interventions. It is therefore curious that scientists know so little about its underlying neural mechanisms. Writing in Nature, Chen and colleagues1 report the use of a simple but robust method for generating placebo pain relief in mice, and thereby define the neural circuit that underpins the phenomenon. They show that the expectation of pain relief is mediated by a population of neurons in a part of the brain’s limbic system, a system well established to be involved in pain. Unexpectedly, however, these neurons send signals to parts of the brainstem and cerebellum. This is a big surprise, given that these regions are usually associated with more-basic functions, such as coordinating movement.

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Nature 632, 990-991 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02373-x

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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