There’s a whole series of such techniques involving detailed brain imaging. Another set of such studies I’m going to come back to in a few minutes, but I’m going to detour briefly to talk about another area where the mind and body interrogate each other for surprising outcomes, and this has to do with the placebo effect.

Now, historically, the placebo is an inactive or innocent contrivance that people use to encourage healing in the absence of something better to do. In research, we began to use a placebo to control for the nonspecific effects that might confound the calculation of the true benefits of a novel intervention. If you believe it’s going to work, that may contribute somewhat to its effectiveness, just like if you believe you’re seeing color, that might contribute somewhat to what you’re seeing.