650: Is spirituality medicine? | Joshua W. Brown, Ph.D. episode artwork

EPISODE · May 17, 2026 · 52 MIN

650: Is spirituality medicine? | Joshua W. Brown, Ph.D.

from The mindbodygreen Podcast · host mindbodygreen

“Placebo effects are real and mind-body effects are real, and there's a fairly large scientific literature on these things,” says Joshua W. Brown, Ph.D. Brown is a professor of Psychological and Brain Science at Indiana University, where he directs the Cognitive Control Lab. He also co-founded the Global Medical Research Institute With decades of experience in computational neuroscience and over 79 peer-reviewed publications, he brings the same rigorous scientific methodology to extraordinary claims of healing that he applies to understanding the brain. 00:00 - A neuroscientist's brain tumor diagnosis 07:29 - Prayer with expectation 10:43 - The biology of belief 12:13 - Inside the Global Medical Research Institute 17:14 - Even known placebos still work 20:27 - The science of miracles  24:10 - Conversion disorders & the mind-body line 32:02 - The brain is a prediction machine 38:02 - How chronic stress writes itself into the body 41:18 - Why "just believe" doesn't work 43:22 - Healing happens in community 47:16 - When neuroscience met the Dalai Lama 50:26 - The morning practice that grounds his day Referenced in the episode:  To learn more about Brown, visit his website: https://joshbrownneuro.com/  Buy Brown’s book here: https://a.co/d/07qL3LKj  To learn more Brown’s research, or to report your own miracle, visit the Global Medical Research Institute website: https://www.globalmri.org/ We hope you enjoy this episode, and feel free to watch the full video on YouTube! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Placebo effects are real and mind-body effects are real, and there's a fairly large scientific literature on these things,” says Joshua W. Brown, Ph.D. Brown is a professor of Psychological and Brain Science at Indiana University, where he directs the Cognitive Control Lab. He also co-founded the Global Medical Research Institute With decades of experience in computational neuroscience and over 79 peer-reviewed publications, he brings the same rigorous scientific methodology to extraordinary claims of healing that he applies to understanding the brain. 00:00 - A neuroscientist's brain tumor diagnosis 07:29 - Prayer with expectation 10:43 - The biology of belief 12:13 - Inside the Global Medical Research Institute 17:14 - Even known placebos still work 20:27 - The science of miracles  24:10 - Conversion disorders & the mind-body line 32:02 - The brain is a prediction machine 38:02 - How chronic stress writes itself into the body 41:18 - Why "just believe" doesn't work 43:22 - Healing happens in community 47:16 - When neuroscience met the Dalai Lama 50:26 - The morning practice that grounds his day Referenced in the episode:  To learn more about Brown, visit his website: https://joshbrownneuro.com/  Buy Brown’s book here: https://a.co/d/07qL3LKj  To learn more Brown’s research, or to report your own miracle, visit the Global Medical Research Institute website: https://www.globalmri.org/ We hope you enjoy this episode, and feel free to watch the full video on YouTube! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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650: Is spirituality medicine? | Joshua W. Brown, Ph.D.

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“Placebo effects are real and mind-body effects are real, and there's a fairly large scientific literature on these things,” says Joshua W. Brown, Ph.D. Brown is a professor of Psychological and Brain Science at Indiana University, where he...

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