The placebo effect demonstrates the mind’s capacity to outperform a given treatment. Within contextual limits, one can deduce from it the impact on the body of believing to be true something that is false. I’m interested here in a related concept that follows quite naturally: what is the impact of believing to be true something that is?

Suppose a theory is developed that accurately describes a human physiological process. Is it possible for an individual to modulate–enhance or diminish–the consequences of the process on themselves based on the degree to which they believe or disbelieve the theory?

Consider sleep, for example. One of the theories seeking to explain why we sleep posits that it’s a time during which the brain terminates superfluous inter-neural connections that were established over the course of the preceding day, leaving intact only those connections that are stronger, where the strength of an inter-neural connection is considered to be a function of how frequently the neurons “speak” to each other, which is correlated with how much of our conscious attention the associated thoughts/actions receive. Suppose such a physiological process exists and the theory describes it fully and accurately. Do the theory’s authors, having studied the matter so thoroughly, benefit more from the consequences of the process than do those who have either never heard of the theory or who disbelieve it? Does the process execute more completely or to greater effect in the brains of those who believe it to be true?

People who hide behind the questions they pose, too fearful of being wrong to choose an answer from among those available–or to create an altogether new one–are terribly aggravating…my answer to the above is yes, the process does execute more completely in those who, correctly, believe in it.

The least defensible reason I have for feeling this way is that the very existence of the placebo effect suggests that its inverse should exist also. After all, between creating measurable physical benefit from scratch and modulating an existing process, the latter seems a much lesser feat.

Another way to approach the question is to first acknowledge that knowledge influences our behavior. Prior to the discovery of blood type, one could only guess whether a transfusion would benefit or kill the patient. Afterwards, doctors and nurses performed transfusions based on blood type compatibility. Fundamentally, this change in behavior was the result of a new set of considerations influencing how the brains of doctors and nurses controlled their hands, limbs, speech–a set of considerations that was adopted as soon as they came to understand and believe in blood type.

Admittedly, considering the internal/external and micro/macro contrasts, it’s a bit of a jump to claim that adopting new knowledge can lead us to modulate internal physiological processes the same way that it can alter our behavior, but that’s exactly what I contend. And why not? There are numerous precedents: skin temp, heart rate, pain perception, not to mention the unintended physiological process disruption quagmires that are psychosomatic disorders. Sweet dreams.