Instead of dwelling on unpleasant sensations after another vaccination, try focusing on something positive. A new study has shown that developing positive thinking skills can significantly increase the level of antibodies produced after vaccination.

Many people are familiar with the placebo effect—a phenomenon where belief in a treatment leads to improved health, even if the person is taking a sugar pill instead of real medicine. Scientists from Tel Aviv University set out to determine whether a similar effect—specifically, a positive attitude toward treatment—could influence the effectiveness of an actual drug, in this case, the hepatitis B vaccine.

How the Study Was Conducted

The experiment involved 85 participants. First, everyone was trained in techniques to boost activity in the brain’s ventral tegmental area (VTA)—a key part of the reward system. To do this, participants were placed in an MRI scanner and their brains were scanned while they tried various strategies to activate the VTA or another reward system area, the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). These strategies included imagining a pleasant future trip, anticipating something good, recalling enjoyable physical sensations, or using visual images chosen by the participants themselves.

After four training sessions, during which participants learned to activate their brain’s reward systems, they received a hepatitis B vaccination. Blood samples were taken before and after vaccination for immunological analysis.

Results and Conclusions

On average, the researchers did not find significant differences between the test and control groups. However, it turned out that those participants who learned best how to activate and maintain VTA activity showed a statistically significant increase in antibody levels. In other words, VTA activation did not work for everyone, but those who mastered this skill did gain a measurable benefit.

“These results show that consciously forming positive expectations can trigger reward pathways and influence the immune system—a process that could be used for non-invasive modulation of immunity,” the study authors write in their article published in Nature Medicine. “Thus, we can harness the natural abilities of our mind and brain to help heal the body during challenging times.”