Demystifying Mechanisms of Placebo Effects Across the Lifespan

The placebo effect is one of the most striking and well-known demonstrations of the mind’s influence on the experience of pain. While for decades clinical trials have aimed to reduce the placebo effect, there is growing interest in leveraging the placebo effect to improve pain treatments and to relieve suffering. This includes moving beyond a narrow understanding of the placebo effect as expectations for a placebo pill, and instead moving towards an understanding that the brain’s ‘inner pharmacy’ can be leveraged in a variety of ways through clinical care. To effectively leverage these placebo effects in clinical care, it is essential to understand their psychological and neurobiological mechanisms. In this Panel Workshop, our three speakers will share cutting-edge findings that demonstrate how placebo effects operate through a variety of mechanisms including conditioning effects, social learning, and via ‘mindsets’ about the body and its capacity to heal. Our speakers will also highlight how placebo effects may change with age, sharing novel data from child and adult samples. Finally, our speakers will discuss why demystifying placebo mechanisms is critical to effectively and ethically leveraging placebo effects in clinical care across the lifespan.