How hypnosis changes your BRAIN: Getting under the influence changes the way you process information and makes neural regions act independently of each other, study finds
- Researchers examined a person’s brain in and out of a hypnotic state
- They identified changes in brain structure under hypnosis
- This included regions of the brain acting more independently than when awake
Hypnosis alters the brain, changes the way it processes information and makes neuronal regions act independently of each other, a study has found.
Researchers from the University of Turku studied the brain of a person who had been “intensely studied” and known to be highly susceptible to hypnosis.
The team found that the way our brain processes information is fundamentally altered during hypnosis compared to a natural ‘wake state’.
During a normal wakeful state, information is processed and shared by various parts of our brain to enable flexible responses to external stimuli, they explained.
However, during hypnosis, the brain shifted to a state where individual brain regions acted more independently of each other, the Finnish team found.
Hypnosis alters the brain, changes the way it processes information and makes neuronal regions act independently of each other, a study has found. Image bank
The team decided to focus on a single individual, as they already had a deep understanding of their brain from previous extensive study.
The subject was a 51-year-old office worker with no history of neurological disease, who had participated in several previous studies.
The female is a good test subject because she is able to experience a wide variety of hypnotic cognitive phenomena, including vivid auditory and visual hallucinations, both positive and negative.
“These phenomena can also be induced after hypnosis,” explains the team.
The study was conducted by tracking how a magnetically induced electric current travels through the brain during hypnosis and normal wakefulness.
This method has previously been used to measure system-level changes in the brain in various states of consciousness, such as anesthesia, coma, and sleep.
This is the first time that such a method has been used to assess hypnosis.
During the study, the participant was seated with their eyes closed, alternately hypnotized or in a normal waking state.
Hypnosis was induced via a one-word cue, and the different conditions were identical in all other respects.
“It allowed us to control for possible effects of the experimental setup or other factors, such as alertness,” Tuominen explained.
The discovery shows that the brain can function very differently during hypnosis compared to a normal waking state.
This is interesting because the extent to which hypnosis alters neural processing has been hotly debated in the field, the authors explained.
Researchers from the University of Turku studied the brain of a person who had been “intensely studied” and known to be highly susceptible to hypnosis. Image bank
“We propose that the observed change in brain state under hypnosis may be characterized by a shift from the metastable state of normal waking consciousness to more separate connectivity.”
“These findings cannot be generalized until replication has been performed on a larger sample of participants,” said study author Jarno Tuominen.
However, he said they were able to demonstrate “what kind of changes occur in the neural activity of a person who reacts particularly strongly to hypnosis”.
The study was published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness.
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