LONDON (Reuters) - It's not all in the mind -- the so-called
placebo effect is real and reaches right down to the spine,
German scientists said on Thursday. The finding may help in the
hunt for better ways to tackle pain and other disorders. Using
modern imaging technology the researchers found that simply
believing a pain treatment is effective actually dampens pain
signalling in a region of the spinal cord called the dorsal
horn, suggesting a powerful biological mechanism is at work. "It
is deeply rooted in very, very early areas of the central
nervous system. That definitely speaks for a strong effect,"
lead researcher Falk Eippert of the University Medical Center
Hamburg-Eppendorf told Reuters. Eippert and colleagues used
functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to study changes
in spinal cord activity. They applied painful heat to the arms
of 15 healthy men and compared the spinal cord responses when
they thought they had been treated with either an anaesthetic
cream or a placebo. Both creams, in