{"id":15111590,"date":"2026-05-20T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/positive-thinking-could-help-boost-your-immune-system\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T13:01:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T17:01:40","slug":"positive-thinking-could-help-boost-your-immune-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inthacity.com\/news\/positive-thinking-could-help-boost-your-immune-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Positive thinking could help boost your immune system"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mind can regulate the immune system. And through directed thinking, people can learn to turn on immune-boosting brain areas, a new study finds.<\/p>\n

The idea that the brain can influence the body emerged long ago, says Tor Wager. He\u2019s a neuroscientist at Dartmouth University in Hanover, N.H. But only in the last few years have there been \u201creal breakthroughs in understanding the neuroscience behind this,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Positive expectations turn on one part of the brain\u2019s reward system. This region triggers the feelings of pleasure we get from eating good food, winning a game or receiving a compliment. Nerve cells in this part of the brain respond to such rewards by releasing the chemical dopamine<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Tamar Koren is a physician scientist at Tel Aviv Medical Center in Israel. She was part of a team that used genetic methods to stimulate these \u201creward\u201d cells in mice.<\/p>\n

Turning on those neurons brought surprising health benefits. The mice were better able to fight bacterial infections<\/a> and recovered more quickly from heart attacks<\/a>. Stimulating the animals\u2019 reward circuit even slowed the growth of tumors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The approach looked so promising that Koren\u2019s team wanted to know if it could work for people, too. But the genetic and molecular tools used in mice can\u2019t ethically be used in humans. Instead, the team trained people to turn on their reward circuits with their own thoughts.<\/p>\n

Her team shared details on how they did that in the January 19 Nature Medicine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Responding to cues<\/h2>\n

This line of research grew out of work done in the late 1890s by Ivan Pavlov. This Russian scientist studied how our bodies extract energy and nutrients from food. In one famous experiment, he rang a bell every time he got ready to feed a hungry dog. Before long, just the sound of the bell would make the dog start salivating \u2014 even when there was no food. Psychologists call this a conditioned response. (For this and related work, Pavlov would take home the 1904 Nobel Prize<\/a> in physiology or medicine.)<\/p>\n