The Patient's Brain: The neuroscience behind the doctor-patient relationship
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0199579512
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
There is a vast literature on what has often been called the doctor-patient relationship, patient-provider interaction, therapist-patient encounter, and such like. However, it is thanks to recent advances within neuroscience, that we now find ourselves in a much better position to be able to describe and discuss the biological mechanisms that underlie the doctor-patient relationship. For example, we now know that different physiological and biochemical mechanisms take part in complex functions, like trust, hope, empathy and compassion, which are all key elements in the therapist-patient encounter. With this neuroscientific knowledge in their hands, health professionals will soon be able to directly see how their words, attitudes, and behaviors activate and inactivate molecules, cortical areas, and sensory systems in the brains of their patients.
This revolutionary new book describes and explains how this new scientific knowledge can be put to great practical use. It shows how, from a neuroscientific perspective, the doctor-patient relationship can be subdivided into at least four steps: feeling sick, seeking relief, meeting the therapist, and receiving therapy. The main advantage to approaching the doctor-patient relationship from a neuroscientific perspective is that physicians, psychologists and health professionals can better understand what kind of changes they can induce in their patients' brains, further boosting the professional's empathic and compassionate behavior.
Written by the author of the critically acclaimed 'Placebo Effects', this book will lead to a better awareness of the potential power that the doctor's behaviour may have on the patient's behavior and capacity for recovery from illness, as well as to better medical practice and social/communication skills. It will be required reading for physicians, psychotherapists, and neuroscientists.
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Aspect of placebo responsiveness is important because it goes in a different direction compared to expectation of reward or anxiety reduction. In fact, in these latter cases cognitive/affective processes are crucial and the patient must be aware of what is going on. By contrast, conditioned placebo responses take place regardless of what the patient expects. For example, conditioned hormonal increases can be obtained even if the subject expects hormonal decreases (see below and Benedetti et al.
Stimulation returned to normal, the open procedure was more effective than the hidden one at 10 min. Therefore, the hidden unexpected interruption induced a lesser worsening of motor performance, while the hidden stimulus increase produced smaller therapeutic effects. The second line of evidence that hidden deep brain stimulation is less effective than open stimulation comes from the analysis of autonomic and emotional responses to intraoperative stimulation with microelectrodes (Benedetti et.
Stimulus detection and pain threshold were not correlated with cognitive impairment, whereas heart rate increases after warning and after pain were positively correlated with cognitive status. Fig 7.4 (A) Linear regression analysis of MMSE scores versus stimulus detection (white circles, broken line) and pain threshold (black circles, bold line). (B) Linear regression analysis of MMSE scores versus heart rate response to anticipation of pain (white circles, broken line) and to pain stimulation.
Francisco, CA. Kandel ER, Schwartz JH and Jessell TM (2000) Principles of neural sciences. 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill, New York. Keverne EB, Martensz N and Tuite B (1989). Beta-endorphin concentrations in cerebrospinal fluid of monkeys are influenced by grooming relationships. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 14, 155–61. Klein RG (1989). The human career. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Kruk MR, Westphal KGC, Van Erp AMM et al. (1998). The hypothalamus: cross-roads of endocrine and.
Empathy is modulated by a priori attitudes towards the target group. As emphasized by Hein and Singer (2008), it is important to note that empathy is distinguished from sympathy or empathic concern or compassion (see also Batson et al. 2007; Eisenberg 2007). An emotion produced by empathy is isomorphic with the other’s emotion. This is not necessarily true for sympathy or compassion (Eisenberg 2007). Nor is empathy necessarily linked to pro-social motivation, namely, the concern about the.