A team of researchers at a New York hospital have provided evidence for the powerful effects of beliefs. Ofer Perl et al. (2024) recruited participants for a study on nicotine dependence. The participants were told that an electronic cigarette they were about to vape contained either low, medium or high strengths of nicotine. In fact, all participants experienced the same level of nicotine.
Participants were given a decision-making task that was known to engage the neural circuits activated by nicotine. During this decision-making task, brain activity was recorded using functional neuroimaging (fMRI). The researchers found that activity in the thalamus (which has the highest density of nicotine receptors in the brain) varied in relation to a participant’s belief about nicotine levels rather than actual nicotine levels (which was constant for all participants).
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