By applying magnetism to a specific area of the brain, a person temporarily becomes more susceptible to hypnotherapy. That can help pain patients.
“Look deep into my eyes.” These words undoubtedly come to mind when you think about it hypnosis thinks. The therapist in question then lets you fall into a kind of sleep, after which you do everything he or she says. But this is just the picture that movies paint. In reality, a milder form of hypnosis, hypnotherapy, successfully applied in medical science. And it now appears that brain stimulation increases the chance of a successful session. This is what scientists from Stanford University write Nature Mental Health.
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Hypnoticability
The idea of hypnotherapy is that as a patient you get in touch with your subconscious. This will then give you more insight into your needs and possibilities. This could then initiate a process of healing. This may sound a bit vague, but there are actually patients who benefit from this. There is ample evidence that it helps with chronic pain, anxiety, depression, addictions and weight loss.
But not everyone is equally ‘hypnotizable’. It works very well for about 15 percent of people. They score a 9 or a 10 on a scale of 10. About two out of three score in the middle bracket; Hypnotherapy works a little for them. And you don’t have to touch it with the other people. They are almost or completely insensitive to technology.
To focus
The extent to which someone can be hypnotized remains the same throughout his or her life. This makes it similar to other brain properties that do not change, such as personality and IQ. The current researchers, led by David Spiegel, did several years ago already explains the neurobiological basis of hypnotizability. This shows that the left dorsolaterale prefrontale cortex and the cortex cingularis anterior involved.
That first brain area processes information and makes decisions; the second collects data from senses. In people who are highly hypnotizable, the contact between the two brain regions appears to be stronger than in others. According to Spiegel and his team, this allows these people to better focus on what’s important by shutting out everything else.
Electric pulses
But now Spiegel and his colleagues appear to have found a way to temporarily increase that brain interaction so that someone becomes more sensitive to hypnosis. Eighty people with fibromyalgia, a form of chronic nerve pain, participated in their study. Half of them underwent transcranial magnetic brain stimulation (TMS).
With transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), electrical pulses are delivered through a magnetic field in a specific area of the brain.
TMS uses a magnetic field to deliver electrical pulses from outside (see image above). Those pulses ended up in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The exact location depended on the unique structure and activity of each patient. The other half of the subjects received a fake treatment that looked and felt like TMS but did not deliver any electrical pulses.
Fewer painkillers
Before and after the brain stimulation, the participants underwent hypnotherapy. What turned out? In the patients who had received TMS, hypnotizability increased by one point on a scale of 10. That may not seem like much, but according to the researchers, this can make the difference between the success or failure of a hypnotherapy session. Unfortunately, the effect turned out to be short-lived; after about an hour the hypnotizability had returned to its previous level.
Spiegel and colleagues now hope that this form of brain stimulation can always be used just before hypnotherapy in pain patients. Successful treatment could reduce the use of (highly addictive) painkillers. They even speculate that the technique can be used to improve the chances of success for others psychotherapies to boost.
Sources: Nature Mental Health, Stanford Medicine via EurekAlert!
Beeld: Massimo Regonati
2024-01-05 08:46:16
#Brain #stimulation #people #sensitive #hypnosis
