A new article from Trends in Cognitive Sciences explores how cognitive neuroscientists are

becoming increasingly interested in understanding hypnosis and are using it to simulate unusual
states of consciousness in the lab.
Hypnosis was typically treated with suspicion by mainstream cognitive science, although an
important turning point came when a 2000 study demonstrated that people hypnotised to see
colour on grey panels showed activity in the colour perception areas of the brain.
Myths about hypnosis are still common, but it is nothing more than a participants willing
engagement in a process of suggestion. The hypnotic induction, sterotypically the counting
backwards and the you are feeling sleepy patter, helps but is not necessary.
Crucially, and for reasons that are still unclear, we all vary in our hypnotisability. This
characteristic is known to be more stable than IQ, and normally distributed, like many other
psychological traits.
In other words, we can all experience the relaxation and focus, and we can all imagine what the
hypnotist is suggesting, but only more highly hypnotisable people experience the suggestions as
involuntary, as if theyre happening by themselves.
Recent research has suggested that highly hypnotisable people can disengage the process that
looks out for rival demands on our attention, from the process that allows us to focus on which of
the competing tasks we need to home in on.
In other words, in highly hypnotisable people, suggestions to experience things contrary to
everyday reality may be able to take effect because the normal detect and disentangle
mechanism has been temporarily suspended.
Combined with carefully crafted suggestions, this ability allows researchers to simulate certain
mental states and experiences in the lab.
For example, hypnotically suggested paralysis, blindness or loss of feeling have been used to
simulate the symptoms of hysteria or conversion disorder, a condition where neurological
symptoms appear without any damage to the nervous system being present.
Other studies have used hypnosis to simulate the feeling that the body is being controlled by
outside forces, a common symptom in psychosis, or where a patient thinks their reflection in the
mirror is another person, a delusion called mirror misidentification.
And we covered a fantastic study last year, where researchers used hypnosis to simulated
psychogenic amnesia, a loss of memory just for old information despite the fact that the patients
have none of the brain damage associated with the classic amnesia syndrome.
This new in-depth article covers research attempting to understand hypnosis itself, and science
that uses hypnosis as a lab tool, and is a great introduction to the neuroscience research in this
developing area.