Only about 10 percent of the population is generally categorized as “highly hypnotizable,” while others are less able to enter the trancelike state of hypnosis. To study hypnosis itself, researchers first had to find people who could or couldn’t be hypnotized. “There had not been any studies in which the goal was to simply ask what’s going on in the brain when you’re hypnotized,” said Spiegel. While researchers have previously scanned the brains of people undergoing hypnosis, those studies have been designed to pinpoint the effects of hypnosis on pain, vision and other forms of perception, and not the state of hypnosis itself. “In fact, it’s a very powerful means of changing the way we use our minds to control perception and our bodies.”ĭespite a growing appreciation of the clinical potential of hypnosis, though, little is known about how it works at a physiological level. “Hypnosis is the oldest Western form of psychotherapy, but it’s been tarred with the brush of dangling watches and purple capes,” said Spiegel, who holds the Jack, Samuel and Lulu Willson Professorship in Medicine. But doctors like Spiegel know it to be a serious science, revealing the brain’s ability to heal medical and psychiatric conditions. A serious scienceįor some people, hypnosis is associated with loss of control or stage tricks. “Now that we know which brain regions are involved, we may be able to use this knowledge to alter someone’s capacity to be hypnotized or the effectiveness of hypnosis for problems like pain control,” said the study’s senior author, David Spiegel, MD, professor and associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. Distinct sections of the brain have altered activity and connectivity while someone is hypnotized, they report in a study published online July 28 in Cerebral Cortex. The scientists scanned the brains of 57 people during guided hypnosis sessions similar to those that might be used clinically to treat anxiety, pain or trauma. The power of hypnosis to alter your mind and body like this is all thanks to changes in a few specific areas of the brain, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered.

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Hypnosis spiral