Subconscious Cues Might Help You Heal Faster
DOES root canal surgery feel more painful because you can hear the dentist’s drill? That is one implication of new research suggesting that sounds, sights and smells can subtly alter our response to treatment, in a way akin to the placebo effect. The finding reinforces the idea that much of our behaviour may be the result of our minds responding subconsciously to cues that are reminders of past experiences.
The placebo effect occurs when people with a medical condition appear to get better after receiving a treatment containing no active ingredients - for example, sugar pills - or even after a chat with a kindly doctor. It is thought to work because recipients have, over their lifetime, become conditioned to feel better when they take a pill or see their doctor.
It had been thought that the effect only occurs when we are conscious of receiving treatment. Now it seems that subliminal cues can trigger something akin to the placebo effect and its dark twin, the nocebo effect, which makes people feel worse.
Researchers led by Karin Jensen of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Charlestown tested the idea by showing 40 volunteers two different images on a computer screen. One image coincided with the volunteers receiving a short but painful heat pulse to their arm. With the other image, they received a milder pulse. Each time they saw one of the two images, they had to rate the extent of their pain, from none to unbearable.
Next, 20 of the participants repeated the test, but this time the researchers applied the same level of heat for both images. Because the volunteers had learned to expect different levels of pain from each image, they continued to rate the pulses that came with the “high pain” image as more severe than those with the “low pain” image.