Scientists now agree that brain scans show changes during hypnosis – for example children with cancer have been show to be more able to deal with the pain of lumbar punctures when using self-hypnosis.
John Gruzelier, Imperial College London says of hypnosis: “We have a magnificent therapeutic tool which has been ignored because there is no evidence of the mechanism involved. Now we are getting evidence of the mechanism and we now hope people will take it more seriously and develop its effects on cancer and the immune system, pain analgesia and so on.”
Tests on hypnotised volunteers at the University of Wales suggested that a region of the brain that checks imagination against reality (called the anterior cingulated cortex) is altered during hypnosis, allowing experts to confirm that hypnosis creates an altered state of consciousness.
Peter Naish of The Open University says: “The evidence really, really is there. There are other areas where it will probably come soon. Hypnosis is not miraculous. It is for real. Something is going on. The brain is doing quite different things during hypnosis from what it does in ordinary everyday existence”.
