To many people, hypnosis seems like a floaty thing you have to believe in before it works, but nothing could be further from the truth. There is a difference in people's hypnotizability, but your belief in it doesn't always have anything to do with it. The hypothesis that most researchers have is hypnosis allows the brain to go along more easily with suggestions from the hypnotherapist. The state of trance is also recognized by many people who have been hypnotized, but how exactly does it work in the brain?
In this article, I explain more about how hypnosis affects how the brain works.
Hypnosis and the subconscious mind
The state of hypnotic trance is often described by people who have been under hypnosis before. The hypnotic state resembles that of sleep, but is not the same as sleep is what many people say. The following characteristics are important when you are in hypnosis:
- A sense of deep mental relaxation.
- Mental Concentration.
- A reduced level of judging, monitoring and censoring.
- A break from normal orientation with time, location and feeling for yourself.
- The idea that acting is automatic or beyond your control.
These characteristics give the state of hypnosis a clear framework that it is a different feeling than normal, a state in which you are more open to suggestions. This also shows that hypnosis works on the conscious and subconscious. After all, you are always aware of your surroundings, place and yourself but people thus indicate that when they are under hypnosis the time, surroundings and even the feeling with themselves temporarily, so only during that trance, becomes less important for a while. So that people can be completely absorbed in the hypnosis and the therapy that comes with it without worrying about what time it is, where they are, where they might have to go later and how they look. The worry about whether your hair looks good, for example, is then completely gone.
What that state really means was investigated through 4 PET scans before the induction of hypnosis and 4 PET scans after the induction of hypnosis. This study showed that hypnosis affected the cortex cingularis anterior, the thalamus and a part in the trunk brain called the ponto-mesencephalic brainstem.
The part of the cortex cingularis anterior is important for processing emotional stimuli and also pain stimuli and specifically that we do not want to be in pain and avoid those kinds of situations. The influence of hypnosis on this part of the brain may explain why hypnosis works so well against anxiety and pain.
Instead, the thalamus is important for processing all the stimuli from your senses. So it is important for processing touch, smell, sound, sight, taste and even your emotions. This may explain why hypnosis can help people who have difficulty eating certain types of food that are not in themselves unhealthy.
The ponto-mesencephalic brainstem is important for your alertness and responsiveness. This part of your brain also deals with your reflexes. The influence of hypnosis on this part of the brain may explain why people feel relaxed as if they are close to falling asleep. This may also explain why the sense of time and place becomes temporarily less important when you are under hypnosis.
These parts of the brain also have a lot of influence on the subconscious mind.
Hypnosis and improving performance
The effect of hypnosis and therapy is evident from the following study. 16 people had to indicate the color that described a word, but there was a catch. The colors and words of colors were different. So the color could be red, but the word green, green was the correct answer in that case. This is a psychological tease used more often in mental studies. People who were well susceptible to hypnosis performed significantly better with reciting the correct color than those who were not well under hypnosis.
During hypnosis, people were told that they would have absolutely no problem saying the correct color even if the word writes a different color than the one on display. People who were less under hypnosis took on average 10% longer to say the correct color. Now the question is, why did the people who came under hypnosis do better?
To investigate which parts of the brain are activated and less active by hypnosis, people were examined while under hypnosis with an MRI scan. These scans showed that when you were under hypnosis the part of the brain that processes visual stimuli was less active as well as the part that deals with conflict. So the beauty of it is that the conflict of the color and the word arrives less and the visual processing becomes less active, making the task easier to solve.
In the process, therefore, the "dealing with conflict" part is also weakened. This may explain why people under hypnosis can resolve their conflicts better than otherwise. Normally, you have dissonance. There is a problem and with it you have all kinds of beliefs and considerations that determine how you deal with the problem and whether or not you can leave the problem behind. Because you deal with conflicts differently during hypnosis, you may be more inclined to comply or "agree" with the suggestions the hypnotherapist gives in order to be able to give a problem a place and it no longer poses problems for you.
This is just one example of what hypnosis is good for. Other studies show that hypnosis can be used for:
- Changing experiences or viewing past experiences.
- Strengthening or weakening certain neurocognitive processes that enhance the effect of a psychological task (such as the example described)
- Contextual cues for the psychological interaction between the hypnotherapist and client.
- The individual traits that determine how hypnotizable a person is.
The latter in particular shows why it is important to deepen the state of hypnosis. Especially with people who are difficult to hypnotize, deepening hypnosis is important to enhance hypnotizability in the moment. In doing so, there seems to be evidence that suggestions from a hypnotherapist can influence what you hear, see and the pain you feel.
The influences of hypnosis allow people to experience pain in a different way than normal. That people can have a different visual perception, this is very useful, for example, for people with eating problems or wrong self-image. Hearing can also be interpreted differently which is helpful for people with tinnitus and other hearing problems. It is then not that you suddenly no longer have tinnitus, but you can deal with it differently.
In the process, it is also known that people's self-esteem can improve dramatically through hypnotherapy.
In short
PET scans and MRI scans show that hypnosis actually affects the way the brain reacts during hypnosis, which may explain why hypnosis feels the way it does. Hypnosis affects your alertness and handling of sensory and emotional stimuli.
In the process, other research shows that the suggestions people receive during hypnosis actually affect people's behavior after hypnosis. The explanation researchers give for this is that something happens in the subconscious that makes people better able to perform certain tasks discussed during hypnosis.
In addition, research on the influence of hypnosis on the brain is still in its infancy and much research remains to be done. However, research has long been conducted on the causal relationship hypnosis may have on people's emotions and behavior. These research findings are also extremely interesting for even better treatments in the future.
Want to learn more about what you can achieve with hypnosis and how you can help other people with hypnotherapy? Then check out the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training courses and events.
Sources:
http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20050627/what-hypnosis-does-to-brain
