Hypnosis Research Into Amnesia

Several studies into hypnosis have included brain scans and monitoring brain activity and have revealed insights into brain activity when under hypnosis.

One particular hypnosis study took brain scans of two groups of people that were hypnotised to forget and recall. The study group was tested for their susceptibility to hypnosis. According to the results, the group was split into a susceptible group and non-susceptible group.

Each group was shown the same short video of a day in the life of a woman. A week later, they were placed in a scanner to monitor brain activity and hypnotised. During the hypnosis, it was suggested to them that they would forget having seen the video. A cue was also planted which would reverse the suggestion and enable them to remember the video.

After this hypnosis session, the groups were tested for their ability to recall the video. As expected, the susceptible group showed less recall ability than the non-susceptible group.

The brain scan analysis of the susceptible group showed suppressed activity in certain areas of the brain whilst the memory was being suppressed. Once the memory was restored, the activity in those areas increased again.

The researchers wrote that the induced amnesia

“affects an executive preretrieval monitoring process, which produces an early decision on whether to proceed or not on retrieval, and in case of a [question about the movie], aborts the process.”

An overview of the study was published in Science Daily. Further studies are needed, but researchers hope that this study may go partway in helping understand real-life, clinical amnesia.