Our Quest to Understand the Mind-Body

We tend to think of symptoms as accurate read-outs of underlying disease processes. When visiting a doctor, patients are asked to list their symptoms, which are then used to work backwards toward a possible diagnosis. This approach assumes a tight and reliable link between symptoms and disease. However, a wide range of phenomena calls this assumption into question.

Symptoms do not always stem from underlying disease, as in psychosomatic or functional disorders. They do not always improve when disease is targeted, as seen in placebo effects. Expectations can also shape bodily experiences in powerful ways, as in hypnosis. Although such top-down effects have long been treated as either dubious or too mysterious to study rigorously, this is now changing rapidly. Drawing on research from the cognitive sciences, this talk outlines what we have learned so far about the mind–body connection and considers what may come next.

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