Spiegel, the Jack, Lulu, and Sam Wilson Professor of Medicine, has spent decades researching hypnotherapy and using it to help patients control pain, reduce stress, quit smoking, and more. Several years ago, Spiegel led a team that used brain imaging to uncover the neurobiological basis of this behavior. They found that people who were more susceptible to hypnosis had stronger functional connectivity between the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is involved in information processing and decision making. and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which is involved in stimulus detection.
“It makes sense that people who naturally coordinate their activities between these two regions would be able to focus more intensely,” Spiegel said. “It’s because you’re focusing and adjusting your distraction system.”
Stable trait changes
Based on these insights, Der Spiegel collaborated with Nolan Williams, MD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, who has developed non-invasive neurostimulation techniques to treat conditions such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and suicidal ideation. We formed a team.
There was hope that even stable traits, such as the ability to hypnotize, could be altered through nerve stimulation.
For the new study, researchers recruited 80 participants with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain disorder that can be treated with hypnotherapy. They excluded people who were already susceptible to hypnosis.
Half of the participants received transcranial magnetic stimulation, in which a paddle applied to the scalp delivers electrical pulses to the brain. Specifically, they received two 46-second applications of 800 pulses of electricity to a precise location in their left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The exact location depends on the unique structure and activity of each person’s brain.
