Many skeptics consider hypnotism as some sort of a trick, but being hypnotized really does change the way your brain works. According to a recent study conducted by Dr. David Spiegel, the associate chair of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, reveals interesting facts about how the brain changes during hypnosis.
For the hypnosis study, Spiegel and his colleagues chose 57 people to participate. More than half of the participants were highly hypnotic, whereas 21 did not appear to be successfully hypnotized.
“I hope this study will demonstrate that hypnosis is a real neurobiological phenomenon that deserves attention. We haven’t been using our brains as well as we can. It’s like an app on your iPhone you haven’t used before, and it gets your iPhone to do all these cool things you didn’t know it could do.”
During the study, MRIs were used to display the difference in blood flow through the brain. First, a scan was completed while the participants was resting. Next, the MRI scanned their brains while recalling a memory. Lastly, the participants were scanned while being induced into a hypnotic state.