For decades, science has looked askance at the famous placebo effect with medications. We know it exists, we know it worksbut he as exact has always had gray areas that have prevented us from exploiting it to the fullest. Its presence is such that in scientific studies it must be kept in mind in order to be able to avoid your bias.
Discovering it. Now, a recently published study in Nature Medicine has just shed light on this mechanism, and the conclusion is fascinating: training your brain to have positive expectations can physically boost the immune response. Something that can cause a drug or vaccine to work with great effectiveness thanks to having ‘positive thinking’.
And a team of researchers led by Nitzan Lubianiker has shown that there is a direct biological connection between the brain’s reward system and the body’s ability to generate antibodies after a vaccine.
A training. The experiment, which sounds like something out of a white science fiction novel, recruited 85 healthy participants. The objective was not to give them drugs, but to subject them to neurofeedback sessions using functional magnetic resonance imaging. That is, activating a part of your brain to generate an organic response.
Specifically, the goal is to activate the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA)a key deep brain region in the reward circuit and motivation. The same one that ‘turns on’ when we eat something very delicious or receive a ‘like’ on the last published reel. In this way, during four sessions the participants learned to increase the activity of this area by evoking pleasant memories or positive mental strategies. They were literally flooded with Mr. Wonderful quotes.
A vaccine. After doing this training with the brain to activate the reward zone, the participants received a vaccine against hepatitis B. The researchers’ objective was to see if having previously received good motivation with positive thoughts had an influence on the effectiveness of the vaccine.
The result. A week after receiving the vaccine, blood tests revealed a key fact: those subjects who achieved greater activation of the VTA showed higher levels of antibodies. That is, they had developed a greater body response against the virus. Something that would offer better resistance in the event of being exposed to the hepatitis B virus.
A missing link. What this study puts on the table is solid evidence for psychoneuroimmunology. It’s not magic, it’s biology: the brain’s reward circuits seem to have a “direct line” with the immune system that until now we had not had controlled.
Ignacio J. Molina Pineda, professor of Immunology at the University of Granada, highlights the importance of the discoveryor by pointing out that it demonstrates how positive expectations modulate immune potency. It is the other side of the coin nocebo effectsomething we already saw during the COVID-19 vaccine trialswhere fear of side effects caused real symptoms in patients who had only received saline water.
But there is fine print. Although in this study there was a correlation between brain activation and the presence of more antibodies, there were no large differences in the average total antibody concentrations between the trained and control groups.
It must be taken into account that the antibodies were only measured a week later, meaning that we do not know if this ‘super protection’ lasts months or years. Something that also adds to a very small sample of 85 people that could require replicating the study on a large scale.
Future applications. This is undoubtedly the most important thing we can think of with these results. And if it ends up being confirmed, we could be facing the birth of complementary therapies where, before an immunological treatment or an important vaccination, the patient goes through a brief mental training to maximize the effectiveness of the drug.
Images | Robina Weermeijer Tim Mossholder
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