Hypnosis Not Just A Party Trick

Unless exposed to a karaoke machine while drunk, most sensible people don't gyrate on stage Elvis-style in front of strangers. Unless of course they volunteer at a hypnosis show. But it's this idea of hypnosis as a mere party trick that researchers at the BA Festival wanted to get away from.

Dr Christina Liossi (University of Wales) presented evidence that hypnosis can help relieve the pain suffered by children with cancer.

Half of 80 children with cancer (aged 6-16 years) were hypnotised before they
received injections into their spine, a painful part of their medical treatment; the
other 40 children received counselling. All the children were also given local
anaesthetic as usual. The children who were hypnotised reported feeling less pain and anxiety than the children who weren't hypnotised. When the children were taught to hypnotise themselves, there was still some benefit but not as much as when they'd been hypnotised by an expert.

"We now have experimental evidence to say that hypnosis is an evidence-based
intervention, at least for children who undergo painful treatment procedures" Liossi said.
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This work was presented by Dr Christina Liossi at the BA Science Festival in Exeter.

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Brain activity changes during hypnosis, study finds

Centre for Clinical Neuroscience, Univosiry of Hull 2009 study shows: Hypnosis is increasingly being used in clinical settings, as a way of helping people lose weight or stop smoking. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently approved the technique for treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, but despite such endorsements there is still a great deal of scepticism about whether there really is a hypnotic state.

You can obtain a copy of the paper, Hypnotic induction decreases anterior default mode activity was published in Consciousness and Cognition on 12 November directly from Clare Mulley at University of Hull, c.mulley@hull.ac.uk.

Dr McGeown says of the finding: “These results are unequivocal; the changes in anterior brain activity observed in our study occurred only in highly suggestible subjects, those most open to the idea of hypnosis. By contrast, no changes in brain activity were detected in these areas in the low suggestible subjects. This shows that the changes were due to hypnosis and not just simple relaxation.”

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