More than Placebo

[Mr.Badham]

It seems to me that humans are the only animals that respond to placebo. Why? I believe placebo is a type of symbol. It's like art. It's merely representative of something else.

When we think something nice, our brains release dopamine. Dopamine is evolutionarily advantageous, so humans have conditioned themselves to release dopamine whenever they do/see/hear/feel something that enriches their lives.

A dog can eat a sirloin steak and it's own puke with equal vigor. Why? It sees no difference. I'm suggesting there is no difference, except in our minds.

I'm suggesting that anything that causes you to feel a certain way, simply by thinking about it, is placebo. Reacting to placebo is beneficial. Therefore our reaction to placebo is what set us on our evolutionary path to superiority.

However, this leads me to believe that we do not have a soul. But rather, the belief that we do have a soul is what releases dopamine, and therefore, it is beneficial to believe it..... as with all things that cause us to release dopamine. ie, a belief in the self.

If I am correct, we are nothing more than brains attached to bodies that have stumbled upon the evolutionary advantage of dumping dopamine whenever we think pleasant thoughts like... a soul, heaven, the self, our favourite team winning the championship, love, etc, etc, etc.

Question for debate; Am I wrong?

[Unhand Me Sir]

It seems to me that humans are the only animals that respond to placebo.

Do you have any evidence for this?

Dopamine is evolutionarily advantageous

What do you mean by this?

I'm suggesting that anything that causes you to feel a certain way, simply by thinking about it, is placebo. Reacting to placebo is beneficial. Therefore our reaction to placebo is what set us on our evolutionary path to superiority.

By a placebo we normally mean something believed to be actively beneficial when it actually isn't. A sugar pill which is believed to be a drug, for instance. Sometimes patients have had health benefits after taking a placebo - more often, they haven't. That's why placebos are used as controls in drug trials - the drug being tested only works if it produces better results than a placebo. It has nothing to do with dopamine.

It doesn't make much sense to say that anything that makes you feel good by thinking about it is a placebo. And feeling good about something is not necessarily beneficial - fear and disgust make us averse to things that are likely to be harmful.
Feeling good about rotting meat or a charging tiger wouldn't be at all beneficial.

There's no evolutionary benefit to feeling good in itself, only when we feel good about things that do confer evolutionary benefit. Feeling good is the incentive that makes us do the evolutionary beneficial thing. Sex is the clearest example of that - but of course that isn't uniquely human, and nor are most examples of behaviour motivated by feeling good.

There may have been evolutionary advantage to belief in souls, but to argue that persuasively you'd need to suggest what evolutionary beneficial thing people tend to do because they believe in souls.

[Mr.Badham]

[Replying to Unhand Me Sir]

To respond to placebo you must have the expectation that what you're doing/taking is designed to make you feel better. There's no way to show that animals understand what a vet or the owner is doing.

I'm suggesting that happiness both makes you healthier and is also an indication of health.

Here's an example that I like; place a mouse in a bucket of water and put a lid on it. That mouse will die 5 times sooner than a mouse in a bucket of water without a lid on it. That's "hope". Hope allows that mouse to carry on. In that time something could happen to the bucket and the mouse could escape. That is evolutionarily beneficial.

Placebo is more than a pill. It involves the environment and state of mind of the person receiving it. Injections work better than pills and doctors work better than nurses.

I think placebo is probably the most obvious manifestation of something larger. I think we respond to placebo for the same reason we respond to art, numbers, language, love, money.

Maybe it's our capacity to judge

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 3 by Mr.Badham]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19912522

A positive response to placebo administration, manifesting as a decrease in seizure frequency, can be observed in epileptic dogs.

(Dogs respond to placebo effect)

[OnceConvinced]

You are probably correct.

The problem I see with placebos is they often don't have a long term affect.

I can recall as a parent and my children coming up to me crying because they had a scratch and there was a little bit of blood seeping out of the scratch. As soon as I put on the sticking plaster (bandaid), all was well. I actually referred to sticking plasters jokingly as "placebos" because they always seemed to solve the problem, which was very insignificant to begin with. In this case the Placebo had a permanent affect, because the wound quickly stopped bleeding underneath that bandaid and by the time it was removed the wound had completely healed.

Other times though, placebos aren't gonna cut it and are only going to do their trick for a short while until the person realizes they haven't gotten any better. Religion provides many such placebos. For instance, praying over someone who is in pain. The placebo kicks in, the dopamine does something and "Praise the Laarrrd" a healing has occurred in front of a church full of people. Then the person goes home and the pain returns. No healing has occurred at all.

I think the placebo affect can also apply when it comes to religious beliefs, however you have to keep injecting yourself with it to allow you to continue to feel the effects. That's why attending church regularly, praying and reading the bible are so important - that's the placebo effect. You stop taking the placebo and it starts to wear off, then you start to return to the way you used to be.

[Mr.Badham]

[Replying to Jashwell]

There wasn't a lot of information given in that write up. I'd like to know how you tell a dog that the medicine or treatment you're giving it is intended to decrease his epilepsy.

The thing about placebo is that you have to know that you're taking them, and you have to believe they will help. Not only that, they will only help that which you are taking them for.

I'd like to know what was done to the dogs.

Side note; I sensed a little satisfaction in your response. That's the placebo effect.

[Mr.Badham]

[Replying to post 5 by OnceConvinced]

My main point is that placebo is an illusion, and so anything that causes us to react simply by thinking, is also an illusion.

Take love. It feels real, it makes you feel good, it changes your mood, but it only exists in our minds. The connection we feel is an illusion. I'm saying that our brains have evolved to make illusions because of their benefits.

This is something I just thought of recently so I threw it up here to get some negative feedback to see what I might have missed.

It occurred to me that dogs do understand symbolism because they recognize a leash as a symbol for walking, or a dish as a symbol for food. They've also taught a gorilla to use symbols to communicate, so I'm way off on that one.