单选题 Aimee Hunter, a research psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has long studied individual responses to antidepressants. Being skeptical of the true effectiveness of the drugs, she says she was originally interested in researching the impact of placebos. But over the years, her own data began convincing her otherwise. "I've come to see now, by doing the research myself and spending hours looking at numbers, that the medication is absolutely doing something," Hunter says.
In an earlier study that Hunter published in 2009, she and her team used the same QEEG technique on 58 patients, who were given a placebo daily for one week before being randomized to take either placebo or an active drug. Researchers found distinct patterns of brain activity in the patients; not everyone responded to the placebo the same way. "We found that changes in brain function occurring during the first week of placebo predicted who will do well on medication," she says.
The region where changes were recorded—in the prefrontal lobe—is thought to be involved in generating expectations. A common explanation for the placebo effect is that the mere anticipation of improvement begets real benefit. But in the case of Hunter's patients, the changes in brain activity predicted actual response to the antidepressant , not to placebo.
Intriguingly, in patients who showed the specific brain response associated with antidepressant-related recovery, the most significant improvement was seen in what psychologists call interpersonal sensitivity how people respond to either positive or negative social events. When suffering from depression, patients tend to become inured to positive social cues and oversensitized to negative ones. They may interpret a passerby's frown as being directed at them, for instance, and some research has found that depressed people are more likely to misidentify smiling faces as conveying neutral or negative emotions. The patients who improved with medication in Hunter's study "were less sensitive to rejection and more comfortable with others," she says.
Reducing emotional sensitivity—not treating depression per se—is what medications like Prozac, which affect the levels of serotonin in the brain, do best, according to Healy. If that entire class of drugs had been studied and marketed as pills to reduce emotional reactivity rather than depression, he says, "the placebo response would be very small compared to the drug. "
Still, treating a patient's oversensitivity does not necessarily help depression. For some people whose illness is marked by social dread and misperceived rejections, reducing that anxiety could be critical. But for someone whose depression is primarily experienced as deep sadness and inability to feel pleasure, blunting emotional sensitivity may do little good. These differences further explain why the drugs may produce such varied individual responses.
Evidence suggests that about 80% of people with depression can be helped by drugs, talk therapy or a combination of the two, so although it is critical to figure out which treatments work for which patients, the larger question remains: Why aren't most patients getting good care, and why do we continue to insist that so many of those taking antidepressants don't really need them?

单选题 At the beginning of her research, Hunter
[A] could not distinguish antidepressants from placebos.
[B] found medication was of no use to depressed patients.
[C] did not believe antidepressants could really help patients.
[D] did not use the right medical instrument to do her experiment.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】第一段提到，Hunter起初怀疑抗抑郁药这类安慰剂的实际作用，但是从后来的实验中她发现，抗抑郁药对病人的确起到了作用。在第一段第二句中，the drugs指antidepressants，从第一段的叙述来看，Hunter起初把antidepressants看做一种placebo。但她后来的发现使她相信，antidepressant在病人身上的确能产生疗效，而一般的placebo不能。
单选题 It is generally believed that placebos can work on some patients because
[A] the patients believe in the effects of these placebos.
[B] the placebos have generated real effects on the patients.
[C] the patients are never told anything about the placebos.
[D] the placebos are milder medications than antidepressants.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】第三段第二句提到，一般认为，安慰剂之所以有效，是因为病人期望它能带来疗效，因为有这种期望，服用过安慰剂之后，病人的病情果然就好转了。因此人们经常说，安慰剂经常起到心理作用。但是，Hunter的研究却发现，一般的安慰剂并不能给抑郁症患者带来疗效，但抗抑郁药却能引起大脑活动的变化，这说明抗抑郁药对人的心理产生了影响。
单选题 The most important finding Hunter has made is that
[A] antidepressants never work on any patients with depression.
[B] antidepressants lower the patients' interpersonal sensitivity.
[C] depressed people tend to look at the negative side of a situation.
[D] depressed people never get along well with other people.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】第四段提到了这一发现，作者认为这是非常引人注目的发现(intriguingly)。简单地说，这一发现就是抗抑郁药对人的interpersonal sensitivity产生了作用。Interpersonal sensitivity指人对外部事件的情绪反应。所以，许多药物实际上起到了降低情绪的敏感程度的作用——它们并非直接治愈了抑郁症，正是由于这个原因，抗抑郁药才对抑郁症患者产生了疗效。
单选题 Reducing emotional sensitivity
[A] is what a placebo can do for patients.
[B] cannot help depressed patients at all.
[C] works better with some patients than with others.
[D] is the only thing an antidepressant can do.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】倒数第二段提到，降低情绪敏感程度并不一定能治疗抑郁症。这种做法是否有效取决于病人的病情。也就是说，对于抗抑郁药，不同的人会有不同的反应，有的有疗效，有的没有任何效果。
单选题 It is implied in the last paragraph
[A] talk therapy is the most effective treatment for depressed people.
[B] it is easy to figure out which patient should receive which treatment.
[C] a combination of talk therapy and drugs works best on depressed patients.
[D] antidepressants should not be treated simply as another kind of placebos.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】根据第一段，Hunter仅仅把抗抑郁药看做一种安慰剂，但她的研究使她发现，病人对安慰剂没有反应，而对抗抑郁药有反应。她发现，抗抑郁药通过降低情绪敏感程度对抑郁症患者起到一定的疗效作用，虽然它们并不能直接治疗抑郁症。因此，文章最后一句反问道：我们为什么还继续坚持认为那些服用抗抑郁药的人不需要它们呢?言外之意，抗抑郁药对抑郁症患者有作用，应该让他们服用这类药物。