Fill in the Blanks (Reading & Writing)

Choose the word that best fits each blank.

The placebo effect is a curious phenomenon in which patients feel better after taking a treatment that has no active medicine in it at all, such as a sugar pill. Researchers believe the improvement comes partly from the patient's expectation of getting well, which can influence how the brain processes symptoms like pain. Because of this, modern drug trials compare a real medicine against a dummy treatment to be sure that any benefit comes from the drug itself.

In the placebo effect, patients improve after taking an —inactiveexpensiveexperimental treatment, largely because their —expectationdietage of recovery affects how the brain interprets their symptoms.