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Hypnosis Gets Positive Recognition
An anonymous reader writes to tell us the New York Times is reporting that, despite its negative history, hypnosis is now getting some favorable attention from neuroscientists. From the article: "These extensive feedback circuits mean that consciousness, what people see, hear, feel and believe, is based on what neuroscientists call "top down processing." What you see is not always what you get, because what you see depends on a framework built by experience that stands ready to interpret the raw information - as a flower or a hammer or a face."
In light of the above, reading A Rimbaud is illuminating. Rimbaud forced himself to see what he thought of as his poetic vision. He would stare mercilessly into a pool until he saw a fabled city. William Blake is another who willed visions. Rimbaud gave up poetry at a very early age and turned to gun running, but also later spoke of science as the only worthwhile pursuit.
My newest DYI project is an EEG machine to compliment my interest in neurobiology and slow wave sleep. For those who want an in to hypnosis, biofeedback and sleep "EEG.pl is an open repository for software, publications and datasets related to the analysis of brain potentials: electroencephalogram (EEG), local field potentials (LFPs) and event related potentials (ERP)"
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
"The probe, called the Stroop test, presents words in block letters in the colors red, blue, green and yellow. The subject has to press a button identifying the color of the letters. The difficulty is that sometimes the word RED is colored green. Or the word YELLOW is colored blue. " Hypnotised subjects recognised the words more often than unhypnotised subjects.
The Stroop test also differentiates between subjects with a thick corpus callosum and those with a thin corpus callosum - eg: left handers and right handers. Considering the small sample was this factor controlled for?
Also psych experiments use very small samples and have to use the repeated measures statistical technique. This can identify significance but is restricted in other information it can provide.
Anybody try any of the self hypnosis software like Virtual Hypnotist successfully? I've tried a few opensource/free programs, and they don't seem to work.
Note that I'm interested in self hypnosis purely from the scientific-curiosity/entertainment/skeptic point of view. Not looking for serious therapy stuff here (Office Space comes to mind).
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I remember talking to a psychologist once who, once learning that I was a computer guy, suggested that combining a form of auto-entraining hypnosis with some creative input devices you could easily make an immersive environment with today's technology. The only problem is that by allowing yourself to be hypnotised you're putting yourself into a highly suggestive state (duh, that's how it works) and as such you really need to trust the creator of the experience that you are being fed. If, for example, you're experiencing an online environment, you're allowing random unknown people to have intimate access to your mind. Not exactly something I'd be interested in doing. But consider the fiction of Neuromancer: "a consensual hallucination". That's what we're talking about here. The dangers experienced by Case were real and could lead to his death if he took on a system he couldn't control. Regardless, Case accepted the risks because the rewards were so great.. perhaps that kind of attitude is something we should strive towards. Our aversion to risk is limiting our sensory perception of our shared experiences. We're limited to screens and keyboards. Sure, our screens have gotten bigger and more colourful and we've got joysticks and mice, and surround sound, but the experience of cyberspace is so poor compared to meatspace. And that's not getting any better.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Hypnosis might have a negative reputation if you buy the movie "mind control" version, which has nothing to do with reality, and shame on anyone who even thought it was. It has long been a testable theory, and research has shown that every 90 minutes or so the brain goes into a slightly hypnotic state, daydreaming if you will. This is a natural process of the brain. It's still not known how or why this happens, but the effect has been known for a long time.
It's a very weird thing to demonstrate to someone who's long held the negative "its' a crock of shit" view based on what they've seen on movies or in stage hypnosis.
I'll give you an example of something that a psychotherapist (long story) did for me. When you get into that relaxed state, that's not quite as relaxed as sleeping, but its still a very numb relaxing pleasant feeling, the hypnotist "tests" your state in numerous ways. The most popular one is telling you your eyes are glued shut and no matter how hard you try you cannot open them... then a few minutes later asks you to try, but you will not be able. Every time this happens to me, I *KNOW* I can open my eyes, I'm fucking positive about it, I *KNOW* they're not glued shut, I *KNOW* the hypnotist is a lying bastard, full of shit.. but you know what... I don't wanna... I like them shut. It's difficult to explain, but you just find yourself wanting to go along with fun little things like that.
That's a crude little insight into what a hypnotic state feels like and the level of "control" anyone has over you. Try it yourself, you dont have to believe in it. If anything, its just a great way of relaxation. I use it at night as a cure for insomnia. A guided session helps me get to sleep within about 10 minutes. You might argue that this is just the power of suggestion, or the placebo effect... but that's exactly what's its meant to be.
I also make my own mp3's depending on what I'm looking for.. If preparing for a job interview I run through the interview over and over again in a hypnotic state. It's a great way of mental rehearsing something. Better than just doing it in front of a mirror....
The whole idea of 'top-down' or cognitive drive for the sensory systems is very addictive, since among other things, it allows you to explain perception as some type of baysian method. However it is simply untrue. The visual system is replete with examples, from the Craik-O'Brien-Cornsweet illusion, to stuff like Julesz' Random Dot stereograms (that CANNOT have top down effects), that defy a top-down framework.
Even with effects that might be top-down modulated (like illusory contours) the physiological evidence is totally towards these things happening in the early nervous system. Although there is definitely some feedback present even in this area, one has to consider that RC constants for most neurons are about ~10ms, and much of our perception takes place in ~100ms. These timeframes are VERY well studied, and generally accepted.. and of that 100ms, about 50ms of the time is the signal travelling from the retina to the cortex (see Bullier & DeAngelis, among others). That doesn't leave much room for dramatic top down feedback for general sensory perception.... Your visual system, bottom up, manages to figure out edges, what colors to fill them in with, various levels of depth, what's moving (in relation to your eye movements.. no easy challenge.. how can you tell when your eye moves whether you're looking at a pen, or a moving streak?) and in relation to what else, all within 100-150ms of the stimulus. That just doesn't leave time for very dramatic 'high level' feedback like this article assumes.
Although I've only mentioned vision, there are similar issues in all sensory modalities except audition, which is a special case, since audition is optimized for temporal accuity, but it has its own issues that make it look like much of your perception happens without much top-down activity.
From our current understanding it appears that top-down activity does two things: 1) Equalize 'gain' in the sensory system.. if the amplification levels across you're visual field were different, you wouldn't be able to tell whether a line was something that had to do with the outside world or noise. And 2) Modulate acuity for attention.. which is very complicated in and of itself, but there is good evidence that most early perception occurs even in areas we aren't attending to.
The main 'evidence' in this article is from a 'brain scanner' which is probably fMRI. As one of my professor's liked to say, "In fMRI we show people a picture of their ass, then a picture of a hole in the ground, and subract them." Most fMRI statistics include averaging across areas... which is nice, until you remember that our brain isn't on a sphere, but something with fissures in it, and so you just averaged two things that were (cortically speaking) in other worlds (since because of the fissure they might be centimeters apart! Remember the Cortex is a laminar archiecture around the surface)... so I'm highly skeptical, to say the least.
They've already tried it. Subliminal advertising doesn't work, but there was a report in Salon magazine a few years ago about hypnotizing people (note: obnoxious ad to get access) to get their unconscious reactions to various consumer products for marketing research.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Most commercials follow a basic pattern.. make you feel bad about something... show you the product, show some people feeling GREAT about it.. you want it. The health and beauty range is one of the biggest offenders...
Show a woman with bad teeth, no boyfriend...uh oh.. women recognise this, and their brains make the link... TRY WONDER WHITE!! Now images of a hot young babe with a young millionaire on her arm.
It also works for men's shavers.. Show a guy getting cuts and nicks from his current razor.. you're reminded of that ONE time you nicked yourself shaving... show a guy with GILETTE and he's happy, the blade is gliding over his face... a gorgeous woman touches him and they kiss.. Gilette The Best A Man Can Get...
Rest easy, marketing people will never need hypnosis or subliminal messages to sell you stuff. As long as people have the stupid gene (and yes that includes you and I who all have bought products for equally stupid reasons), companies will make money. Is it their fault. Hell no. Its ours, but at least I'm aware of it. Now anyone want to finance my business idea... it's an amazing new product and after you use it women will find you IRRESISTABLE!
I, and my two sisters, were delivered by an Ostopath/hypnotist. Our mother said she felt no pain but had no drugs during any of the three deliveries. He had worked with her during preganecies, implanting the suggestion that she would feel no pain and that "it would be a beautiful experience". Pretty effective, as my younger sister was a breach presentation, and the doctor was able to move the baby around so that a Cesarian was avoided.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
That wasn't a very good article actually. Top down this...flashing lights/colors that - close to the same old hypnosis as gimmick POV. Hypnosis in one form or another is at the heart of what is called "mental Illness". Even healthy people struggle with mental tapes that play over and over in the mind. A kid getting upset after being yelled at by her parents and called "no good..lazy..a floosey etc" the parents is actually getting set up for hypnotic conditioning. Any shock suspends what hypnotists often call an individuals "critical factors" or the ability to maintain reason, focus, objectivity etc. When critical factors are suspended the door to the sub conscious is accessed and able to receive suggestions. A kid called "no good" while being stressed and upset will find those thoughts in the mind and struggling with them will make them worse since concentration is a function of hypnosis and all struggle deepend the psychic funk. One reason people can't break habits is because they worry, struggle and analyze the problem too much. Indeed, one reason therapy often backfires is because the client is asked to get deeper into focusing on what is wrong instead of becoming objective to it. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is essentially a hypnotic problem. People under severe stress react and the traumatic elements get inside a person's subconscious where they re-animate again and again. A persons conditioned reflex response mechanism which is like the body's memory can feel pain from an ordeal that they were not even aware of when the traumatic event was taking place. Many soldiers and others subjected to stresses that they are shocked by have a consciousness that is overwhelmed as if like a conductor falling into an orchestra. When people dont know how to handle their emotions, or are subject to extreme stresses,they lose some conscious awareness and fall into the gears of their own cognitive and emotional machinery. That's the root for a tremendous amount of mental suffering. Not surprisingly many of the original psychic ruptures take place at home and in the schools when people are kids and get upset by the cruelties, neglects, family problems etc. Media, marketers and politicians etc use these mechanisms (even if only indirectly aware of what principles they are using) by emotionalizing groups of people and then giving them ideas and suggestions. WHen adds play that energizing music and give people feelings and ideas they are trying to condition them hypnotically. People will accept such motivations as if it came from them. Hypnotic elements are all around us and yet it's hardly recognized for what it is. A lot more people can be hypnotized that that article states. One reason people can't be hypnotized is because they are hypnotized already by lifes events and stresses. The correct way to use hypnosis to get someone to stop smoking would be to "un-hypnotize" them. Thats why when a person tries hypnosis for smoke cessation it only works for a little while. Hypnotists don't hypnotize people as much as take over a pre existing state. A fact people don't realize about hypnosis is that intellectual people and people who use their imaginations a lot are the best subjects for hypnosis. People who study a lot are used to focusing their minds and they tend to be sensitive to authority ( a good hypnotists greatest asset is a authoritarian manner) - all good conditions for hypnotic manipulation. One reason artists and such suffer is because they are very open in their own minds to all sorts of forces taking their objectivity captive.
...the use of hypnosis to recover repressed memories?
I think the validity of that is still in question.
I have personally experienced the medicinal effects of hypnosis.
My doctor cured my migraines as a child through hypnosis. He has also cured
asthma through the same techniques with other children. If the disease involves
the mind, hypnosis is very effective.
When you think that the placebo effect is quite effective, consider being able
to influence the subconscious in order to clear symptoms that were artifically
created by the patient. Consider psychosomatic illnesses, where it's all in
the person's head. The symptoms could potentially be cleared through
hypnotic suggestion.
Consider smoking. As a smoker I know my triggers are certain situations.
Hypnosis could be used to 'nullify' these situations so that a person
could get enough willpower to quit.
I see many posts which make fun of hypnosis, but as someone who has benefitted
from it, I just see ignorance. Try it and then make an informed decision.
Disclaimer: I did not RTFA. I did get hypnotized back in August for smoking cessation purposes. Was a 1-2 pack a day smoker for about 10 years. Tried the patch (didnt work), the gum (tasted like crap), wellbutrin (gave me hives and made me not care about anything). Finally I tried hypnosys. Granted, I went into it believing it was going to work, and it did. Two 40 minute sessions later and I havent had a smoke and best of all, I wasnt irritable at all.
If you're talking the age of Mesmer, then yes, hypnosis had a somewhat negative history. But in the past few decades it's become much better understood and it's used to good effect in several medical fields.
Go to your favorite book search site and look for hypnosis in pain management. There's a lot of very well researched scientific literature out there. (Also a lot of crap, but that doesn't make the good stuff any less valid.)
A couple of years ago I spent a lot of time studying hypnosis and I brought up the subject with my stepfather, who's been practicing medicine for over fifty years. When I mentioned pain managment, he told me that he'd used hypnosis once to induce an anesthetic state in a patient in order to set a broken leg. I asked him why he didn't use it more often, and he said "Well, it's cheaper and probably safer than anesthesia, but it took me two hours to get him under enough to pop his bone back in." It's a lot faster to just shoot the patient up with lidocaine.
The only way to load a world view quickly into your brain is to import it from other people. To do this efficiently, your brain must be capable of entering a mode where it uncritically accepts information provided in spoken form (probably mostly from your parents, but other people may play a role). To avoid the risk of abuse, there must be some instinctive criteria that determine when this uncritical uploading of new information should occur. Hypnosis occurs under conditions which mimic the circumstances that satisfy these criteria.
Music: a super-stimulus for the perception of musicality. Musicality: a perceived aspect of speech.
Okay, I think I see what you are saying. The colour red is a concept, and as such, only has meaning within the context of human perception.
We're talking at cross-purposes. When I say "reality", I mean the physical world. I don't mean everything that can possibly be conceptualised.
That was a bad way of phrasing it. A better way of phrasing it would be "the meaning of words in general is entirely irrelevant to the objective nature of reality, so why are you bringing that up?".
It wasn't ironic, because I obviously (or so I thought) didn't mean it in the context you imply.
They are concepts; they don't exist as tangible matter, energy or force. They don't "exist", as such, no. There are patterns in brains that correspond to such concepts, but the individual manifestations of the patterns themselves aren't subjective.Consider the difference between "mind" and "brain". One is an abstract concept, and doesn't physically exist in reality. The other is a tangible object and does physically exist in reality. See the difference? You can't use the former as counter-examples to my arguments, because I'm not talking about what can be conceptualised, I'm talking about what forms a part of reality.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Hypnosis found to alter the brain: Subjects see color where none exists http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/08.21/hyp nosis.html
Your psychological and emotional states are united by neurotransmitters. For every psychological state you enter (building a stairway), emotional states corresponding to that state are created by neurotransmitters (satisfaction, accomplishment etc.) This process gives you your connection to reality. There is a one - to - one relationship between your emotional and psychological states. The emotional state is supposed to follow the psychological state but if the situation is reversed (drugs, hypnosis, religious bafflegab,) an incorrect reality will be created because of the one - to - one correspondence.
After that, I sopped doubting that it works. The only question is, on whom and what % of the time.
Yeah, placebo normally plays a relatively substancial part in hypnosis. If you don't think hypnotism is possible, the chances are you won't be able to be hypnotised very easily, if at all.
I'm certainly no expert but I was interested in it myself about half a year ago and bought The New Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnotism. It has two main sections, one of them is more about the theory side of things (although it doesn't go into as much detail as some of the free websites I've read), and the other has a mind boggling huge array of methods and techniques for putting people into the state(s) of hypnosis and the things that are possible when it's achieved. There are some pretty amazing things people can do when in the deeper states of hypnosis, such as "feeling" the hypnotist touch them (on the back, for example) although the hypnotist doesn't actually touch them, instead the fingers are brought an few inches away from the skin. You can also anesthetise parts of the body, so the subject will feel no sensation at all, following this you could, for example, put a sterilised needle through the skin and leave no mark; no blood, no pain and with the subject fully conscious. You can make blisters appear on the skin simply by touching it, and make them disappear as well. There are lots of other amazing things that have slipped my mind atm. Chances are you'll have seen people like Derren Brown do these kind of things on TV (at least here in the UK anyway).
Both the theory (mainly) and practical have always intrigued me, I've never actually tried hypnotising anyone myself though.
And a special message for those who are sceptical... WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!