Man, whoever told you about that must be well read ;-)
In all seriousness though, I would expect it to work for him, since the placebo effect seems to work for caffeine.
The “anti placebo effect” is the result of a simple classical conditioning. It looks like the strength is just some simple function of the relative timing of the CS and US. It ’s an attempt to maintain homeostasis so you don’t die.
The “regular placebo effect” is a different beast, and seems to have more or less full access to full cognitive capacity. The information about the contents of the pill gets fed ‘down’ to the “prior” input to your bayesian estimators. To the extent that the priors are strong and the data is weak, the final estimate sent back up can look a lot like the priors. This actually explains a ton of cool stuff, but that’s for another comment/post.
The vast majority of examples of this “anti placebo effect” that I have read about involve injections (there was one story of oral intake). I’m really speculating here, but I think that short time frame things like injections would call up the “anti placebo” more strongly than “regular placebo”. The first is that the other drug tolerance mechanisms can usually handle things when the onset is slow, but if the onset occurs in seconds, there has to be a quicker cognitive method to handle it. The second is that the signal to noise ratio is much higher with fast rise times which reduces the effect of the regular placebo effect, and increases the ease of learning the anti placebo effect.
Here are a couplesources on the classical conditioning effect on heroin tolerance.
Thats fascinating, I’d never thought about a reverse effect from conditioning, but retrospectively it seems an obvious adaptation.
Does this mean that the ‘regular placebo’ effect is purely psychological? In which case could it be triggered by things we associate with certain affects but don’t in fact have them? [Say if I sincerely believed lettuce had a strong stimulant effect]
Does this mean that the ‘regular placebo’ effect is purely psychological?
Umm, sure? What would a non purely psychological placebo look like? I’m not quite sure which distinction you’re making
In which case could it be triggered by things we associate with certain affects but don’t in fact have them? [Say if I sincerely believed lettuce had a strong stimulant effect]
Of course. Sugar pills aren’t really stimulants, depressants, anti-emetics, and everything else. Keep in mind that the effects come from the alief level, not the explicit belief level.
Man, whoever told you about that must be well read ;-)
In all seriousness though, I would expect it to work for him, since the placebo effect seems to work for caffeine.
The “anti placebo effect” is the result of a simple classical conditioning. It looks like the strength is just some simple function of the relative timing of the CS and US. It ’s an attempt to maintain homeostasis so you don’t die.
The “regular placebo effect” is a different beast, and seems to have more or less full access to full cognitive capacity. The information about the contents of the pill gets fed ‘down’ to the “prior” input to your bayesian estimators. To the extent that the priors are strong and the data is weak, the final estimate sent back up can look a lot like the priors. This actually explains a ton of cool stuff, but that’s for another comment/post.
The vast majority of examples of this “anti placebo effect” that I have read about involve injections (there was one story of oral intake). I’m really speculating here, but I think that short time frame things like injections would call up the “anti placebo” more strongly than “regular placebo”. The first is that the other drug tolerance mechanisms can usually handle things when the onset is slow, but if the onset occurs in seconds, there has to be a quicker cognitive method to handle it. The second is that the signal to noise ratio is much higher with fast rise times which reduces the effect of the regular placebo effect, and increases the ease of learning the anti placebo effect.
Here are a couple sources on the classical conditioning effect on heroin tolerance.
Sorry not to credit you; I remembered it was someone at the LA meetup but not exactly who.
Thats fascinating, I’d never thought about a reverse effect from conditioning, but retrospectively it seems an obvious adaptation.
Does this mean that the ‘regular placebo’ effect is purely psychological? In which case could it be triggered by things we associate with certain affects but don’t in fact have them? [Say if I sincerely believed lettuce had a strong stimulant effect]
Umm, sure? What would a non purely psychological placebo look like? I’m not quite sure which distinction you’re making
Of course. Sugar pills aren’t really stimulants, depressants, anti-emetics, and everything else. Keep in mind that the effects come from the alief level, not the explicit belief level.