Decode the mystery of hypnosis

Used long ago in medicine as well as entertainment, hypnosis - one of the biggest mysteries of humans - is slowly being deciphered by research by American scientists.

Since the 18th century, it has been discovered that the mind can be manipulated to manipulate the body. But after centuries of using hypnosis to numb and cure patients, it is still not possible to answer whether it is a hypothetical obedience of the hypnotist, or a highly concentrated form of lips. Is the surrounding school out of the thought of being hypnotized? Recent studies have partly deciphered the mechanism of the impact of hypnosis on people's perceptions, leading to hypnotic action by the hypothesis.

10-15% of adults are susceptible to hypnosis, compared to 80-85% of children under 12 years old.

In his new experiments, Michael Posner - Professor of Neurology at the University of Oregon (USA) - and colleagues recorded changes in the information processing process of the human brain. Often the information that the body receives is transferred to the primary sensory area in the brain, which in turn is transferred to higher functional areas where information is interpreted. The research results show that, surprisingly, the amount of information transferred is 10 times more than the amount of information transferred, which also means that what people see, hear and believe is based on information processing Top-down news. Data at the primary processing level can be overwritten depending on the information interpretation results of the highest information processing center. This information processing model also explains why hypnosis, in essence creating a top-down process of information processing, can cause strong phobia.

According to dozens of years of research conducted by Dr. David Spiegel - psychologist at Stanford University, 10-15% of adults are susceptible to hypnosis, compared with 80-85% in children under 12 years old, ages where the top-down processing cycle is not complete; meanwhile, about 20% of adults are difficult to hypnotize.

Dr. Amir Raz - Professor of Neurology at Columbia University - studied the effects of hypnosis using the Stroop test. He gave 16 people, of which half were very easy people, the other half were very difficult people to be hypnotized, looked at the letters with the names of the colors but had the opposite color to their meaning. After haunting them that they were foreign words they didn't understand, he asked them to press the true color button of the letter. In people who are susceptible to hypnosis, the Stroop effect (who knows how to reflex the words must read before pressing the button, so it takes time to resolve information conflicts) is no longer available, they can indicate the color immediately. As for those who are difficult to be hypnotized, the Stroop effect prevails, making them slower.

The brain scan results of the two groups compared with each other showed differences. In the group, it is easy to hypnotize, the visual area in the brain often encodes the letters that appear and the brain area for information conflicts has not worked. The process of processing top-down information overwhelmed the processing of the brain (reading and processing conflicting information) in the right order from the bottom up, but exactly how that happens is still a thing secret.

Some recent studies from brain images also indicate similar mechanisms. According to Dr. Stephen Kosslyn, a neuroscientist at Harvard University, people think that images and sounds from the outside world create truth, but the brain builds its data bank based on experience. from the past. The interest of hypnosis is that it creates false information. " We imagine something different, and it becomes 'the truth', " Spiegel said.