The placebo effect (Latin placebo, "I shall please"), first mentioned in 1955 by Henry K. Beecher, M.D. (Beecher 1955) and also known as non-specific effects and the subject-expectancy effect, is the phenomenon that a patient's symptoms can be alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, since the individual expects or believes that it will work. Some people consider this to be a remarkable aspect of human physiology; others consider it to be an illusion arising from the way medical experiments were conducted. The phenomenon, if it exists at all, is not fully understood by science.(New Scientist Space 19 March 2005) [/b]
Expectancy Effect

The subject-expectancy effect attributes the placebo effect to conscious or unconscious manipulation by patients in reporting improvement. Hróbjartsson and Götzsche argued in their article, "Most patients are polite and prone to please the investigators by reporting improvement, even when no improvement was felt." Subjective bias can also be unconscious, where the patient believes he is improving as a result of the attention and care he has received.

[edit] Conditioning

Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning where the subject learns to associate a particular stimulus with a particular response. In this case the stimulant is the substance perceived as medicine but is the placebo, and the response is the relief of symptoms. It is difficult to tell the difference between conditioning and the expectancy effect when the outcome is subjective and reported by the patient. However, conditioning can result in measurable biological changes similar to the changes seen with the real treatment or drug. For example, studies showing that placebo treatments result in changes in brain function similar to the real drug are probably examples of conditioning resulting in objectively measurable results. (Sauro 2005, Wager 2004, Leuchter 2002)

[edit] Motivation

Motivational explanations of the placebo effect have typically considered the placebo effect to be an outcome of one’s desire to feel better, reduce anxiety, or cooperate with an experimenter or health care professional (Price et al. 1999, Margo 1999). The motivational perspective is supported by recent research showing that nonconscious goals for cooperation can be satisfied by confirming expectations about a treatment (Geers et al. 2005).[/b]
if you have read all that you could proberly see that nearly all the technique work because of placebo effect e.g. b6, herbs, binuaral beat, hypnosis e.t.c. see b6 as a explample it is a known fact like smoking that when your brain get some stimulate or extra chemical it compensate for it so it stay in equilbrium the good effect caused by b6 are none because your brain stops it. like at the top your expect it too work so it does their no special property all lucid aid dont work it just the placebo like i remeber on a bbc channel a program called industruable where to brother were give beer but one was non-alcoholic beer and both show sigh of being drunk all the lucid aid work like this their no special effect just the placebo effect.