Today’s New York Times reports that hypnosis may, in fact, change perception in the brain. Sandra Blakeslee reports on a study which supports this. Dr. Amir Raz demonstrated that the Stroop effect was “obliterated” in the “highly hypnotizable people” he studied.
Read the popular version in the Times article; read the full study in the July 12 issue of the The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
Hypnotic suggestion reduces conflict in the human brain.” by Amir Raz, Jin Fan, and Michael I. Posner PNAS 2005 102: 9978-9983. (note: this article is free!)
Finally, did you know that in the 19th century, “physicians in India successfully used hypnosis as anesthesia, even for limb amputations.” Yow!
Hi CogSci Librarian,
ReplyDeleteI'm really honored that you'd want to use an entry of mine in a class. Please go ahead, and may I also recommend Feel-good Librarian's blog: http://feelgoodlibrarian.typepad.com/ FGL has a lot of good stories of patron interactions that are truly incredible. FGL has dealt with some tough situations with class and caring.
Regarding hypnosis, I read in Skeptical Inquirer (sorry can't give volume and issue number) that people's suceptivity to hypnosis can be gauged by how far their eyes can roll up. I thought this was very intriguing. Do you know anything about this?