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Placebo: Difference between revisions
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''' | '''A placebo is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. However when administered to patients under the guise that it does have an effect, seemingly paradoxically an effect (termed the placebo effect) is usually shown. This is thought to be caused, by [[priming]] via [[Psychosomatics|psychosomatic]] mechanisms.''' | ||
=== '''Why does the placebo effect exist?''' === | |||
A key evolutionary selective aspect is the speed of response to stimuli. The quicker an organism reacts to seeing a lion, the higher its rate of survival and its genes perpetuate through that specific species. You can imagine this development much like an arms race, the mutating genes come up with new ways to quickly respond to stimuli. The initial messenger systems from abiogenesis were simple chemical messengers. i.e. there was stimuli, a chemical (such as an endogenous hormone) was released which caused some sort of response. | A key evolutionary selective aspect is the speed of response to stimuli. The quicker an organism reacts to seeing a lion, the higher its rate of survival and its genes perpetuate through that specific species. You can imagine this development much like an arms race, the mutating genes come up with new ways to quickly respond to stimuli. The initial messenger systems from abiogenesis were simple chemical messengers. i.e. there was stimuli, a chemical (such as an endogenous hormone) was released which caused some sort of response. | ||