Hypnosis and suggestion: Exploring the science behind hypnosis

Welcome to HypnosisAndSuggestion.org, a neutral source of information about the science of hypnosis and suggestion. Hypnosis has been a legitimate source of scientific investigation, generally in the fields of psychology and medicine, for over a hundred years. The aim of this site is to provide a central resource for people interested in the evidence that over a century of careful study has provided. Every attempt has been made to reference sources and to provide as accurate information as is possible. Feedback is always welcome here so if there is any information you would like to see on this site, or if there are any glaring errors, then please get in touch.

Hypnosis News Blog

April 2008: Book reviews section added
A book reviews section has been added to the site. First up is Hypnotherapy Explained by Dr Assen Alladin, which is a generally excellent exposition of the use of hypnosis in medicine and psychology.

April 2008: Hypnosis used to investigate delusions
A team at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science is using hypnosis as a research tool to investigate a number of specific delusions. Some types of delusion do not occur very commonly and the research team home that hypnotically-generated delusions will allow them to study the conditions in greater detail.
Link to the full article on PhysOrg.com

March 2008: BBC Series on alternative therapies looks at hypnotherapy
The first programme in this new BBC2 series on alternative therapies examines hypnotherapy. Presenter Kathy Sykes meets Irving Kirsch and Pierre Rainville to discuss some of their new brain imaging results, talks about hypnosis and attention with Amir Raz, and observes a tooth extraction with hypnosis as the sole anaesthetic carried out by Mike Gow.
Watch the show on BBC iplayer (UK only) / View the programme website

January 2008: High profile brain imaging research on post-hypnotic amnesia
Yadin Dudai and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science publish the results of an excellent experiment involving post-hypnotic amnesia. They took groups of high and low hypnotizability and showed them a movie. One week later participants were hypnotised in an fMRI brain scanner and given suggestions to forget the content of the movie. The suggestions resulted in markedly reduced memory performance, and significant reductions in a left-sided memory retrieval network. The results suggest that activity in certain frontal brain regions is associated with the suppression at an early stage of the memory retrieval process, thus preventing the activation of regions that are crucial for productive memory retrieval. The authors hypothesise that amensia induced by posthypnotic suggestion affected a monitoring system which governed memory retrieval. When a question was retrieved about the film, the memory process was aborted.
Read the full article in Neuron / Read the abstract / Read the press release

November 2007: Radio program about hypnosis on ABC Australia
Dr Amanda Barnier is interviewed in this great radio program on 702 ABC Sydney. The show covers some of the history of hypnosis, the science behind hypnosis, and some of its clinical uses. Essential listening.
Link to the show (mp3)

October 2007: Article about trauma and recovered/false memory in Scientific American Mind
Hypnosis has had a contentious role in the 'recovered memory' debate with some arguing that it can be used to uncover repressed memories of childhood abuse, while others argue that this is dangerous and can iatrogenically create false memories of abuse where no such abuse happened.
Read full article in Scientific American

September 2007, recently published: Spiegel (2007). The mind prepared: Hypnosis in surgery
An interesting editorial advocating the increased use of hypnosis in surgery, and looking at some of the key evidence regarding the use of hypnosis in the relief of pain.
Read article

September 2007, recently published: Montgomery et al (2007). A Randomized Clinical Trial of a Brief Hypnosis Intervention to Control Side Effects in Breast Surgery Patients
In this study 200 patients who were about to undergo a breast biopsy or lumpectomy were given either a 15 minute hypnosis session, or a 15 minute empathic listening session. Patients in the hypnosis group required less anaesthesia and sedative, and reported less pain, nausea and fatigue. Overall surgery time was also reduced, at a saving of over $700 per patient.
Read abstract

March 2007, recently published: Jamieson (2007) Hypnosis and conscious states: the cognitive neuroscience perspective
This book, with contributions from new and established psychologists, philosophers and neurologists outlines and clarifies new programmes of hypnosis research within a cognitive neuroscience framework.
View full reference / View information at Amazon.com

January 2007, recently published: Röder et al (2007). Pain response in depersonalization: a functional imaging study using hypnosis in healthy subjects
This study used hypnotic suggestion to investigate the 'depersonalisation' (a feeling of detachment from one's own body) which is often associated with people who self-harm. Brain activity associated with the experience was pain was measured using fMRI, and was found to be reduced when participants were given hypnotic suggestions for depersonalisation. This study underlines the value of using hypnosis as a tool in research.
View full reference / Read abstract

January 2007: HypnosisAndSuggestion.org launched

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