Many diseases that terrified people of the past today almost forgotten. Doctors quickly dealt with them as soon as changed conspiracies, bloodletting and dubious, if not dangerous medicines (such as mercury) for scientifically proven drugs and methods. However, people in white coats still have a lot of work, and soon they can again revise part of their principles treatment. And in favor of a completely unexpected direction.
Agree with the nerves
In April 2014, the American agency DARPA announced the establishment of the Department of Biological Technologies. Significant event if take into account the specifics of the agency. His mission is to look into the future further others and make science fiction a reality. As part of one of projects department intends to develop brain stimulation technology, correcting nerve disorders (from depression to chronic pain).
A photo from open sources
Project SUBNETS (Systems-Based Neurotechnology For Emerging Therapies) is notable for directly refusing attempts drug treatment. DARPA experts have chosen a different path, where the exposure is not the chemical properties of the cells, but the regime their electrical activity, and stimulation parameters should depend on the response of neurons. In fact, this is a direct dialogue with the nervous system.
In medicine, electrical stimulation is not the first decade, and this method sometimes brings success where powerless medicines. By sending a signal through the electrodes deep into the brain, start the healing process even in patients in state of minimal consciousness, as reported in 2007 Researchers at the Department of Neurology, College of Medicine Cornell University. It looks like an awakening: man begins to move, eat and talk independently.
In this way, they try to help people with depression, obesity or parkinson’s disease. But technology has one decisive drawback – you have to open the skull. Therefore wide she will not receive distribution. It would be great to find more a mild way to affect the nervous system at the same time avoiding the side effects of pharmacology. In other words, come up with treatment without drugs and without traumatic intervention in the body. But is it real?
Medication-free treatment
In search of an answer, it is worth turning to Fabrizio’s research. Benedetti, a neurophysiologist from the University of Turin. This is one of leading experts who are focused on the effects of placebo, and in in his experiments, he uses deep brain stimulation.
As a treatment for suffering from Parkinson’s disease in the area subthalamic nuclei supply electrical impulses. It reduces excessive activity of neurons in this area and leads to improving the well-being and movements of the patient. However benedetti before starting the stimulation, he gave the patients an injection, convincing them which introduces an effective medicine.
A photo from open sources
But in fact, the patients were given normal saline, medical “dummy” without any medicinal properties. More addition: the electrode inserted into the brain was not used for stimulation, but only for reading cell activity. Experiment result turned out to be completely unexpected.
After the injection, the patients began to move more easily, and the level excitations in their subthalamic nuclei decreased as if those got a series of pulses. Somehow the brain is on its own normalized the operating mode in response to fiction. So scientists for the first time managed to register a placebo effect at the individual neurons.
Today, such effects can no longer be taken lightly. As it turned out, not only can a placebo act a dummy tablet or the illusion of electrical exposure, but also imaginary surgery. The prestigious magazine The New England The Journal of Medicine has repeatedly published articles stating that imitation of flushing of the knee gives the same positive effect as real arthroscopy: patients get rid of arthritis.
Some drugs do not reach official sales, because that in the preliminary tests are no better than a placebo. But after all these are active substances developed by specialists for a specific biochemical function. Here we come across an unexpected phenomenon. – the ability of the body to start the process of its recovery with the help of the psyche. This does not always work, and its features limited. But their real limit is not reliably known.
Medicine of the future
Let us give a risky forecast: medicine will be built on management of self-healing mechanisms. At least for parts of violations. Doctors will learn to engage in an indirect dialogue with nervous system, choosing the right stimuli in each particular case.
A placebo is not just an inert thing, it triggers in a person a whole cascade of biochemical changes, including endocrine, immune and nervous system. That is why the study of the effects of placebo today pay serious attention. Having studied the phenomenon on at a fundamental level, maybe you can find a way to reinforce many times.
The script follows the idea of the famous psychologist Nicholas Humphrey of Darwin College, University of Cambridge. is he suggests that much of human history is doctors and healers worked just due to the placebo effect. Their recipes had very distant relation to the physiological component of diseases. Nevertheless, even absurd methods gave a certain positive effect. Humphrey singles out “management system health “as part of the overall management of homeostasis.
The work of this system gradually, during the course of cultural evolution, became depend on the very fact of the presence of doctors, medications and procedures. But all this time she acts spontaneously, by herself. Science will take control of it and significantly increase its power and opportunities, although, of course, patients will not be fed mercury or witchcraft potions. True, future treatments may seem to us much stranger.
Estimated Placebo Mechanisms
Placebo may reduce pain by opioid or non-narcotic effects of expectations and / or conditioned reflexes mechanisms. Body-produced opioids may have inhibitory effect on the respiratory centers.
The sympathetic nervous system of the heart that releases adrenaline, can also be suppressed during the analgesic effects of placebo, although the mechanism is unknown (reduction of pain itself and / or compensating action of opioids). Cholecystokinin counteracts the effect endogenous opioids, thereby reducing the response to placebo. Placebo may also affect the release of serotonin in the pituitary gland and adrenal glands, mimicking the effect of some painkillers preparations.
Fabrizio Benedetti, Professor of Neurophysiology and Physiology human neuroscience department of medical school of Turinsky University:
“The public is interested in the placebo effect because it promises to expand our understanding of the limits of internal human capabilities.
Scientists – because the influence of beliefs on human behavior promises opportunities to study internal control emotional, sensory and peripheral processes.
The study of placebo is in essence an examination of how the context of beliefs and values forms processes in the brain perceptions and emotions and ultimately affects the mental and physical health. Modern neuroscience considers the idea that subjective expectations and values have certain physiological foundations that can have a significant impact on thinking, motor processes and internal homeostasis. ”
