At this time of year, it feels like people are constantly warning you they are “coming down” with a cold. Because the nervous system runs from the brain into every organ of the body, what we believe can have a powerful effect on how we respond to illness. Neuroscientists are still trying to work out the specific mechanism behind this link, but the placebo effect is still regularly proven to be one of the strongest medical responses there is. Here’s one extraordinary example: researchers got ethical permission to experiment on people who needed different kinds of knee surgery. Then half of them underwent surgery and the other half didn’t – their knee was stitched up exactly as it had been, instead.

Source: The Guardian November 13, 2016 06:00 UTC