Positive thinking may boost the body’s defenses against disease.
Increasing activity in a brain region that controls motivation and expectation, specifically the brain’s reward system, is linked with making more antibodies after receiving a vaccine. The finding suggests these boosts were related to the placebo effect, researchers report January 19 in Nature Medicine.
“Placebo is a self-help mechanism, and here we actually harness it,” says Talma Hendler, a neuroscientist at Tel Aviv University. “This suggests we could use the brain to help the body fight illness.”
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