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What happens in the brain during hypnosis?
Listen instead of reading · 35 minDirty Mind: Dirty Talk Hypnosis – Find Your Own WordsNo script, no borrowed lines: a trance that lets your own words out – in a lower, slower voice. In short
Brain imaging shows that hypnosis is not sleep and has no single brain centre. In highly hypnotizable people, hypnosis has been linked to reduced activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, stronger coupling between the prefrontal cortex and the insula, and weaker coupling with the default mode network. Suggestions can also change activity in the regions that process the targeted experience, such as colour or pain.
Key facts
- During hypnosis, highly hypnotizable people showed reduced dorsal anterior cingulate activity and changed prefrontal connectivity (Jiang et al., 2017).
- A suggestion to see colour in a grey image changed activity in colour-processing regions (Kosslyn et al., 2000).
- Changing how unpleasant pain felt changed anterior cingulate activity, not primary somatosensory activity (Rainville et al., 1997).
- A meta-analysis found hypnosis involves networks for attention, control and body awareness – no single 'hypnosis area' (Landry et al., 2017).
Two different questions
Brain studies of hypnosis ask two different things. First: what does the brain do in hypnosis itself, before any specific suggestion? Second: what happens when a suggestion targets a particular experience – colour, pain, reading?
The hypnotic state
The Stanford study by Jiang and colleagues (2017) compared highly and less hypnotizable adults in the scanner. During hypnosis, the highly hypnotizable group showed three changes: less activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, an area involved in monitoring and salience; more coupling between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the insula, which links control and body awareness; and less coupling between the prefrontal cortex and the default mode network, which is active when the mind wanders and reflects on itself.
The authors connect this to how hypnosis feels: absorbed, less self-conscious, with actions that seem to happen by themselves. That is an interpretation, but a coherent one.
Suggestions change the target system
When a suggestion is aimed at an experience, the regions processing that experience respond:
- Colour: told to see colour in a grey pattern, highly hypnotizable participants showed activity in colour regions (Kosslyn et al., 2000).
- Pain affect: suggestions to make heat more or less unpleasant changed activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which tracks unpleasantness (Rainville et al., 1997).
- Conflict: suggestions that words are meaningless reduced conflict-related activity during the Stroop task (Raz et al., 2005).
The honest summary
A meta-analysis across studies found involvement of lateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and insula, with a lot of variation between studies (Landry et al., 2017). The brain shows real changes during hypnosis and suggestion, mainly in people who respond strongly. It does not show a hypnosis switch.
Questions
Is hypnosis a kind of sleep?
No. Despite the name, which comes from the Greek word for sleep, people under hypnosis are awake. Brain recordings during hypnosis look like focused wakefulness, not sleep.
Can a brain scan show whether someone is hypnotized?
Not reliably. Studies find group-level patterns that differ between hypnosis and rest, but no test that can tell for an individual whether they are hypnotized.
Do suggestions change perception or just what people report?
Several imaging studies show that suggestions change activity in brain regions that process the targeted experience, such as colour or pain affect. That suggests more than a change in reporting, at least in highly hypnotizable people.
Terms on this page
- Hypnosis Hypnosis is a state in which you turn your attention fully inward and engage with your imagination – so much that it feels real, like an arm growing heavy.
- Hypnotic induction The induction is the way into hypnosis: breathing calmly, closing your eyes, sinking gradually deeper – the first minutes of every trance.
- Hypnotizability Hypnotisability describes how strongly someone responds to hypnosis. Some people feel a lot, some little, most are somewhere in between.
Studies on this page
- Experiment · 2017 Brain activity and functional connectivity associated with hypnosis Jiang, H., White, M. P., Greicius, M. D., Waelde, L. C., & Spiegel, D. (2017). Brain activity and functional connectivity associated with hypnosis. Cerebral Cortex, 27(8), 4083–4093.
- Experiment · 2000 Hypnotic visual illusion alters color processing in the brain Kosslyn, S. M., Thompson, W. L., Costantini-Ferrando, M. F., Alpert, N. M., & Spiegel, D. (2000). Hypnotic visual illusion alters color processing in the brain. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157(8), 1279–1284.
- Experiment · 1997 Pain affect encoded in human anterior cingulate but not somatosensory cortex Rainville, P., Duncan, G. H., Price, D. D., Carrier, B., & Bushnell, M. C. (1997). Pain affect encoded in human anterior cingulate but not somatosensory cortex. Science, 277(5328), 968–971.
- Experiment · 2005 Hypnotic suggestion reduces conflict in the human brain Raz, A., Fan, J., & Posner, M. I. (2005). Hypnotic suggestion reduces conflict in the human brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(28), 9978–9983.
- Meta-analysis · 2017 Brain correlates of hypnosis: A systematic review and meta-analytic exploration Landry, M., Lifshitz, M., & Raz, A. (2017). Brain correlates of hypnosis: A systematic review and meta-analytic exploration. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 81, 75–98.
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