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Neurotransmitters Research Paper

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Neurotransmitters Research Paper
27th of November 2011

Neurotransmitters are chemicals located in the brain that are responsible for communication of the information between and throughout the brain and the body. They send and transport signals via nerve cells (neurons). Without neurotransmitters our organism wouldn't have the ability to function because they are responsible for the operations in our body. With neurotransmitters, the brains sends signals to the other parts of the organism to perform the actions they need to. In past decades, numerous experiments were done to prove that and to find more about the neurotransmitters.

In 1987, Dr. Jon Levine of the University of California in San Francisco found out that placebo can be expressed as chemical. In other words,
…show more content…
Dr Levine wanted to see if giving the participants regular sugar pills and telling them they are pain-killers will have the same effect as if they were really given a pain-killer pill. As participants were under the influence of the placebo, the endorphins are produced and the pain is relieved. Then, his second aim was to then conclude to what does of morphine does placebo …show more content…
We knew how placebo worked, but not why. By determining that endorphins are responsible for placebo, we need to justify that. In both cases there would be production of endorphins if just the sugar pill was given and with the production of endorphins the relieving of pain. To see if endorphins have something to do with placebo, we have to reject the endorphins and see if there will be any change. To reject the production of endorphins the experimenter used naloxone and saw that there was no placebo-effect if there was no production of endorphins. The possible disadvantage would be that there can be other factors along with endorphins that influence the placebo-effect about which the experimenter does not

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