Brain Changes
Still other investigators have sought to uncover distinct physiological markers of hypnosis. Under hypnosis, EEGs, especially those of highly suggestible participants, sometimes display a shift toward heightened activity in the theta band (four to seven cycles per second). In addition, hypnotized participants frequently exhibit increased activity in their brain’s anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).
Yet neither finding is surprising. Theta activity is typically associated with states of quiet concentration, which frequently accompany hypnosis. The ACC is linked to the perception of contradictions, which many hypnotized participants experience as they imagine things—such as childhood experiences in the present—that seem to conflict with reality. Further, psychologists have reported similar brain changes among awake subjects. For example, the ACC becomes activated during the famous Stroop task, which requires subjects to name the colors of ink (such as “green”) in which competing color words (such as “blue”) are printed. Thus, these brain changes are not unique to hypnosis.
Fueling the perception of hypnosis as a distinct trancelike state is the widespread assumption that it leads to marked increases in suggestibility, even complete compliance to the therapist’s suggestions. Nowhere is this zombielike stereotype portrayed more vividly than in stage hypnosis shows, in which people are seemingly induced to bark like dogs, sing karaoke and engage in other comical behaviors in full view of hundreds of amused audience members.
Yet research shows that hypnosis exerts only a minor impact on suggestibility. On standardized scales of hypnotic suggestibility, which ask participants to comply with a dozen suggestions (that one’s arm is raising on its own power, for example), the increase in suggestibility following a hypnotic induction is typically on the order of 10 percent or less. Moreover, research demonstrates that a formal hypnotic induction is not needed to produce many of the seemingly spectacular effects of hypnosis, such as reduction of extreme pain or various physical feats, popular in stage hypnosis acts, such as suspending a participant horizontally between the backs of two chairs. One can generate most, if not all, of these effects merely by providing highly suggestible people with sufficient incentives to perform them. Stage hypnotists are well aware of this little secret. Before beginning their shtick, they prescreen audience members for high suggestibility by providing those people with a string of suggestions. They then handpick their participants from among the minority who comply.
We agree with Lynn and psychologist Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull in England, who wrote in 1995 that “having failed to find reliable markers of trance after 50 years of careful research, most researchers have concluded that this hypothesis [that hypnosis is a unique state of consciousness] has outlived its usefulness.” Increasingly, evidence is suggesting that the effects of hypnosis result largely from people’s expectations about what hypnosis entails rather than from the hypnotic state itself. Still, it is always possible that future studies could overturn or at least qualify this conclusion. In particular, research on potential physiological markers of hypnosis may elucidate how hypnosis differs from other states of consciousness. Although hypnosis poses fascinating mysteries that will keep scientists busy for decades, it seems clear that it has far more in common with everyday wakefulness than with the watch-induced trance of Hollywood crime thrillers.
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Altered States".
See what we're tweeting about
17 Comments
Add CommentHypnosis reveals - as if by way of caricature - the exceptional power that language confers not only to our capacity to self-regulate but to socially regulate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough hypnosis can be entertaining to observe and be of crucial clinical benefit (in some cases) let's also use it as an opportunity to be warned about our genetically (and by certain categories of naturally selective lifetime challenges in our phylogeny) GUARANTEED gullibility!
The most commonly accepted definition of hypnosis is suggestion. One topic not mentioned here is crowd hypnosis, or suggestion via verbal and body language applied to the masses as used by the nazis and other tyrannies to terrible effect. On this point, I cannot agree more with BEFELL on the extreme gullability of mankind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost hypnotist have maintained that one can go into "hypnosis" by being led there or naturally without a hypnotist's help. Therefore, when those doing the study suggested that the phenomena such as arm levitation etc could occur in the "waking" just as easily as in the hypnotic state how do you know this "waking" state was not actually a natural hypnotic state?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere was a day when hypnosis was a recognized door towards meditation, but Christianity in the Middle Ages condemned hypnosis alongside witchcraft. That condemnation still lingers on, even in the minds of those who are not Christians but who are influenced without their knowing by Christian ideas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy was Christianity against hypnosis? You will be surprised to know it was against hypnosis because it leads directly to meditation; neither the priest is needed nor the church is needed - not even God is needed. This was the trouble.
If meditation succeeds in the world there are not going to be any religions anymore, for the simple reason that you will be in direct contact with existence and yourself. Why should you go through brokers and all kinds of agents who know nothing, except that they are knowledgeable, except that they have been disciplined for years in how to influence people and win friends?
Excerpt from the Osho talk: Therapy, Hypnosis & Meditation
Quite apart from the entertainment issue and the suggestibility of the highly suggestible, hypnosis may be a gateway into a truly remarkable state of alert, awakened consciousness, free of the habitual distractions of the discursive mind. In my own clinical work, I have found that this state of thought-free consciousness can provide a healing respite from the torments and trauma of a distressed mind. More-over individuals can easily learn to seek refuge in this dynamic state of undistracted presence even in the midst of their daily routines. Cleary, true healing and growth can only begin when individuals learn to be fully present in all the situations where they have been mentally and emotionally absent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn contradistinction to the suggestion that hypnosis is a trance-like state, it would seem, that the normal waking state of consciousness is even more trance-like, in that human beings habitually live in their distracted mental chatter. A conscious presence in a purely thought free state of awareness is certainly an awakening from the habitual trance state of mundane consciousness. Hypnosis may be an important portal to that trance free state.
The above is titled "Discuss this article". But the actual article is not given. We only see: "research by psychologist Nicholas Spanos of Carleton University in Ontario". "Research"? Published where? When? In a paper? A letter? A book? Just what are we supposed to discuss, if we can't read the original research, whatever that may be?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this" ... psychologist Joseph Green of Ohio State University at Lima and his colleagues found that 77 percent of college students agreed that hypnosis is a distinctly altered state of consciousness."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a spectacular standard for scientific measurement!
So does watching t.v.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAny by hypnotists induced altered ways of behaving and/or being aware reflect how we evolved to normally be and/or be equipped with "AEVASIVE". [Note the requirement to accEPT a degree of grammatical looseness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAEVASIVE is the most integrative concEPT of a somewhat etymologically pioneering terminology. It was eclectically pieced together with help of a pragmatic approach that entailed The "Principle of Tolerance (nee Uncertainty)" - plus of course many other relevant and more or less readily available facts and observables such as not the least relevant and securely scientifically established principles and trends of interpretation and cumulative conclusions. [All of which corroborate/confirm or support a mainly 'evolutionary psychophysiological type' take and not financial but fairly philanthropically oriented overview of/outlook on ourselves.] AEVASIVE can partly therefore also be said to have been constructed by help of "SEPTIC' sem_antics" - whereof "sem_antics" stands for a wordplay that only to a deceptively dominant extent involves toilet-humored and other mirth-making explanatory philosophical thinking methods and techniques.
Accordingly, AEVASIVE approximately stands for the *Ambiadvantageous(ly)* Evolved aspect of how we to normally are endowed with a Veritable Actention (Selection Serving) System Incorporating/involving (amongst other known neural or neurochemical factors of key/EPTly instructive importance) Various Endo(genous)opiates"].
AEVASIVE is an exceptionally precise and thoroughly defined overarching reference to how our more or less mutant ancestors came to successfully cope in ways that lengthened their lineage towards our now typically and uniquely human languages and language-enabled abilities.
Hypnosis appears to be a normal variant of awakeness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs usual, Lilienfeld and Arkowitz have a lot of cogent points to make in separating fact from fiction, this time on the fascinating subject of hypnosis. My only quibble has to do with their comments on the role of the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC). This brain region is extremely interesting in its role in cognitive and emotional processing, and it is difficult to capture with language exactly what activity there means. Indeed, it appears to have a special function in detecting and dealing with conflict, cognitive dissonance, or perhaps any incoming information seen as problematical. Lilienfeld and Arkowitz state that "hypnotized participants frequently exhibit increased activity in their brain's anterior cingulate cortex."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems more reasonable to me that by hypnotically directing a subject's attention away from the conflicting or unwelcome information (such as, for example, painful sensations) the ACC would be pacified, i.e., less active. This was shown in the study by Raz, Fan, and Posner in their report published in PNAS (July 12, 2005), "Hypnotic suggestion reduces conflict in the human brain." They demonstrated that there was in fact reduced activity in the ACC when highly hypnotizable individuals were guided to disattend in a posthypnotic state the conflict induced by the Stroop effect.
Leon McGahee
As usual, Lilienfeld and Arkowitz have a lot of cogent points to make in separating fact from fiction, this time on the fascinating subject of hypnosis. My only quibble has to do with their comments on the role of the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC). This brain region is extremely interesting in its role in cognitive and emotional processing, and it is difficult to capture with language exactly what activity there means. Indeed, it appears to have a special function in detecting and dealing with conflict, cognitive dissonance, or perhaps any incoming information seen as problematical. Lilienfeld and Arkowitz state that "hypnotized participants frequently exhibit increased activity in their brain's anterior cingulate cortex."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems more reasonable to me that by hypnotically directing a subject's attention away from the conflicting or unwelcome information (such as, for example, painful sensations) the ACC would be pacified, i.e., less active. This was shown in the study by Raz, Fan, and Posner in their report published in PNAS (July 12, 2005), "Hypnotic suggestion reduces conflict in the human brain." They demonstrated that there was in fact reduced activity in the ACC when highly hypnotizable individuals were guided to disattend in a posthypnotic state the conflict induced by the Stroop effect.
Leon McGahee
As an addendum to my previous comment, I note too that in the June 2005 (vol 16, no 2) issue of Scientific American Mind, Nash and Benham in their article on hypnosis refer to the work of Pierre Rainville (p 50): "Using PET, the scientists found that hypnosis reduced the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex -- an area involved in pain -- but did not affect the activity of the somatosensory cortex, where the sensations of pain are processed."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLeon McGahee
It seems to me that hypnosis is the ultimate Placebo Effect. It works only if you believe it does.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuite apart from the entertainment issue and the suggestibility of the highly suggestible, hypnosis may be a gateway into a truly remarkable state of alert, awakened consciousness, free of the habitual distractions of the discursive mind. In my own clinical work, I have found that this state of thought-free consciousness can provide a healing respite from the torments and trauma of a distressed mind. More-over individuals can easily learn to seek refuge in this dynamic state of undistracted presence even in the midst of their daily routines. Cleary, true healing and growth can only begin when individuals learn to be fully present in all the situations where they have been mentally and emotionally absent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBandler & Grinder summed it up very well when they said "There is no such thing as hypnosis and everything is hypnosis." We go in and out of multiple states of consciousness all day everyday. Erickson might not have been right in some of his assumptions but he was still very effective at utilizing the technique of hypnosis for very positive effects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA has proved that space and time are linked. This means everything is related. There will always be a place for Religion. Hypnosis also has a place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this