LAUSR

The authors present the neurophysiology of hypnotic processing using the methods of functional magnetic resonance imaging. A number of theorists have previously speculated that the effect of hypnosis might be related to the tendency of hypnotically talented subjects to empathically focus mainly on their ideation around the hypnotic suggestions presented to them by a hypnotist during hypnosis. In the classic literature, this was discussed as monoideism although more recently this has also been discussed as empathic involvement. Twenty highly hypnotizable participants were selected to experience hypnotic analgesia in reference to mildly painful stimuli. The participants were tested under hypnotic analgesia for their ability to dissociate the pain and without hypnosis so as to simply experience the mild sensation. The authors had hypothesized that the participants might show a completely different neural pattern of processing during hypnosis to the painful stimuli in line with their interpretation of the monoideism hypothesis. The participants did, in fact, demonstrate a large amount of new processing in several Brodmann areas of the brain during the hypnosis task and an inhibition of the previous pain processing in the somatosensory area of the parietal cortex. Hypnotic dissociation of the experience of pain has previously been demonstrated by a number of studies in the somatosensory cortex. This suggests that the participants were not forming a neural representation of their body that included painful stimulation. The authors discussed that the Brodmann area activations were possibly due to alterations in “the main functions of superior brain activity” such as egoic consciousness, voluntary processes, and empathy. Address correspondence to Edoardo Casiglia at [email protected]