Ooops... guess all those serotonin uptake inhibitors might be less effective than placebo because they ARE placebos. :( This is one reason I'm so cautious about drugs that affect brain chemistry... because we basically know NOTHING about it.

They really are just experimenting with peoples' brains when they recommend drugs like that.

Whoa, that is stunning but not altogether surprising, I guess. Medicine is not an exact science by any means. Doctors used to use leeches to solve a variety of maladies?!

Right. I think in this case they got their causes and effects mixed up.

Correlation is not causation.

Of course, the bizarre thing is that the serotonin-less mice still responded to antidepressant medication....spooky!

Which means that placebos sometimes work?

This is a good, levelheaded article that discusses the state of the art -- mostly what we DON'T know -- about whether antidepressants work and for whom and when... but it barely gets into why.

http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1991841,00.html

Do placebos work on mice?

hahaha, chris!  i wonder....

Chris, yes: http://cellularscale.blogspot.com/2012/02/if-you-give-mouse-placebo.html

HalibutBoy, thanks for the article you linked to.

that placebo article is fascinating!

It is! Here's another article that explores whether placebos can work on animals like dogs:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-there-a-placebo-effect-for-animals/

my dog has really made me wonder about what they understand.  he seemed to get ALL of it!  i think we underestimate animals's ability to communicate and comprehend.

Certainly some dogs and cats are good at keying off the emotions of their human friends.

Even if they don't completely understand, they have a general idea.