Pain Decreases under Hypnosis

June 26, 2007 Hypnosis is a process in which critical thinking faculties of the mind are bypassed and a type of selective thinking and perception is established. The term hypnosis was coined by Scottish physician, James Braid, using the Greek word for sleep for the technique which he pioneered as a surgical anaesthetic. Last week a university study presented to the European Neurological Society meeting in Rhodos demonstrated that hypnosis can offer significant reduction in pain awareness without any effect on non-painful aspects of the subject's perception. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity, the studies found hypnosis reduced acute pain perception by about a third.

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