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Hypnotized Brain Feels No Pain

Validating the technique for medicine, hypnosis shown to alter brain activity while reducing discomfort- www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2005-03-15-1

( Includes link to the abstract, which follows news article.)

Brain imaging has yielded insight into how hypnosis can work as an anesthetic while validating the technique for medicine. While hypnosis has been shown to reduce pain perception, it's not clear how. To help find out, researchers at the University of Iowa and the Technical University of Aachen, Germany used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on volunteers under hypnosis.

They found that the volunteers had significant pain reduction in response to painful heat. They also had a distinctly different pattern of brain activity compared to when they experienced the heat while not hypnotized.

The changes suggest that hypnosis somehow blocks pain signals from getting to parts of the brain that perceive pain.

"The major finding from our study, which used fMRI for the first time to investigate brain activity under hypnosis for pain suppression, is that we see reduced activity in areas of the pain network and increased activity in other areas of the brain under hypnosis," says Iowa researcher Sebastian Schulz-Stubner, the study's first author.

The study involved 12 volunteers… Volunteers had a heating device placed on their skin to determine the temperature each considered painful and were then split into two groups.

One group was hypnotized, placed in an fMRI machine and had brain activity scanned while painful heat was applied. Then the hypnotic state was broken and a second fMRI scan was performed with the same painful heat.

The second group underwent their first fMRI scan without hypnosis followed by a second scan under hypnosis. Hypnosis worked for all participants, who reported either no pain or significantly less pain while hypnotized.

With hypnosis, fMRI scanning showed that brain activity was reduced in areas of the body's pain network, including the primary sensory cortex, which is responsible for pain perception. There was also increased activation in two other brain structures, the left anterior cingulate cortex and the basal ganglia.

"Imaging studies like this one improve our understanding of what might be going on and help researchers ask even more specific questions aimed at identifying the underlying mechanism," says Schulz-Stubner. "More practically, for clinical use, it helps to dispel prejudice about hypnosis as a technique to manage pain because we can show an objective, measurable change in brain activity linked to a reduced perception of pain."

 

The research is reported in the journal Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine below.

SOURCE: Better Humans

Clinical hypnosis modulates functional magnetic resonance imaging signal intensities and pain perception in a thermal stimulation paradigm.  Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine , Volume 29, Issue 6, Pages 549-556 S. Schulz-Stübner, T. Krings, I. Meister, S. Rex, A. Thron, R. Rossaint

Objective: This study was designed to describe regional changes in blood oxygenation level dependent signals in functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) elicited by thermal pain in hypnotized subjects. These signals approximately identify the neural correlates of the applied stimulation to identify neuroanatomic structures involved in the putative effects of clinical hypnosis on pain perception.

Methods: After determination of the heat pain threshold of 12 healthy volunteers, fMRI scans were performed at 1.5 Tesla by using echoplanar imaging technique during repeated painful heat stimuli. Activation of brain regions in response to thermal pain during hypnosis (using a fixation and command technique of hypnosis) was compared with responses without hypnosis.

Results: With hypnosis, less activation in the primary sensory cortex, the middle cingulate gyrus, precuneus, and the visual cortex was found. An increased activation was seen in the anterior basal ganglia and the left anterior cingulate cortex. There was no difference in activation within the right anterior cingulate gyrus in our fMRI studies. No activation was seen within the brainstem and thalamus under either condition.

Conclusion: Our observations indicate that clinical hypnosis may prevent nociceptive inputs from reaching the higher cortical structures responsible for pain perception. Whether the effects of hypnosis can be explained by increased activation of the left anterior cingulate cortex and the basal ganglia as part of a possible inhibitory pathway on pain perception remains speculative given the limitations of our study design.

 

 

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