ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some of the issues and findings associated with neuroscientific research of hypnosis. It also considers what these findings about the brain may help understand about the mind and what they may imply for clinical practice. Brain research is challenging under any conditions but is further complicated by the ambiguous nature of hypnosis and the difficulty in defining hypnotic procedures in order to be certain that neuroscientists are measuring what they think they’re measuring. There are numerous technologies available to neuroscientists to employ in their investigations of the brain in general and hypnosis in particular. Most of the studies of the brain in hypnosis use imaging methods for identifying changes in the subject’s brain going from a resting state, often called the “default mode,” to the suggested condition (such as an analgesia or age regression). Believing that brain functions were separated according to brain hemisphere led to differing hypnotic approaches for each brain hemisphere, termed “hemi-hypnosis.”.
