Science of Hypnosis: if you are in a trance, don’t read this

Peo­ple in my Exer­cis­ing Our Brains class­es ask all kinds of fun ques­tions. A typ­i­cal one is about the sci­en­tif­ic val­i­da­tion of hypnosis.

Well, I am very hap­py that Mind­Hacks and Seed Mag­a­zine are com­ing to the res­cue. Mind­Hacks has a great post on Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy of hyp­no­sis, that links to Seed’s Sci­ence final­ly tack­les hyp­no­sis: Neu­roimag­ing stud­ies may domes­ti­cate the long-con­tro­ver­sial prac­tice.

Quote:
“The long-con­tro­ver­sial prac­tice of induc­ing a trance­like state through sug­ges­tion is get­ting a mod­ern makeover by sci­en­tists armed with the lat­est neu­roimag­ing tools and tech­niques. These researchers are begin­ning to offer evi­dence that, neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly at least, hyp­no­sis is entire­ly real.”

But, as Mind­Hacks warns, “hyp­no­sis actu­al­ly increas­es the num­ber of false mem­o­ries recalled, rather than mak­ing remem­ber­ing more accurate.” 

Enjoy,

Alvaro