Welcome to The International Hypnosis Research Institute Web site. Our intention is to support and promote the further worldwide integration of comprehensive evidence-based research and clinical hypnotherapy with mainstream mental health, medicine, and coaching. We do so by disseminating, supporting, and conducting research, providing professional level education, advocating increased level of practitioner competency, and supporting the viability and success of clinical practitioners. Although currently over 80% of our membership is comprised of mental health practitioners, we fully recognize the role, support, involvement, and needs of those in the medical and coaching fields. This site is not intended as a source of medical or psychological advice. Tim Brunson, PhD

Tele-hypnosis in the treatment of adolescent school refusal

Posted At : July 3, 2006 1:25 PM | Posted By : Tim Brunson, PhD
Related Categories: Learning and Memory

Few studies have presented the use of hypnosis in the treatment of school refusal. These studies haven't approached the problem of self-hypnosis during the stressful morning hours. This paper introduces a therapeutic approach, which utilizes known hypnotic techniques, but rehearses them via the telephone, while the patient is at his/her house or on the way to school and the therapist is at the office. Twelve school-refusal adolescents were treated with different hypnotherapy techniques. Equipped with cellular phones and with the therapist's availability, these adolescents could benefit from hypnosis as an alternative coping strategy when the anxiety occurred. Results showed that 8 of the participants maintained full-time attendance, 3 showed partial improvement and 1 failed to improve his attendance. This study illustrates the benefits of self-hypnosis in the treatment of school refusal, while also enabling the patient to maintain the connection with the therapist so that the anxiety may be confronted when it arises.

Abarbanel Mental Health Center, Bat Yam, Israel. alexaviv@gmail.com

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Learning in trance: functional brain imaging studies and neuropsychology

Posted At : June 3, 2006 3:26 PM | Posted By : Tim Brunson, PhD
Related Categories: Learning and Memory

Neuropsychology, Department of Psychology, University of Freiburg, Engelbergerstrasse 41, D-79085 Freiburg, Germany. halsband@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de

This study examined the fundamental question, whether verbal memory processing in hypnosis and in the waking state is mediated by a common neural system or by distinct cortical areas. Seven right-handed volunteers (25.4 years, sd 3.1) with high-hypnotic susceptibility scores were PET-scanned while encoding/retrieving word associations either in hypnosis or in the waking state. Word-pairs were visually presented and highly imaginable, but not semantically related (e.g. monkey-street). The presentation of pseudo-words served as a reference condition. An emission scan was recorded after each intravenous administration of O-15 water. Encoding under hypnosis was associated with more pronounced bilateral activations in the occipital cortex and the prefrontal areas as compared to learning in the waking state. During memory retrieval of word-pairs which had been previously learned under hypnosis, activations were found in the occipital lobe and the cerebellum. Under both experimental conditions precuneus and prefrontal cortex showed a consistent bilateral activation which was most distinct when the learning had taken place under hypnosis. In order to further analyze the effect of hypnosis on imagery-mediated learning, we administered sets of high-imagery word-pairs and sets of abstract words. In the first experimental condition word-pair associations were presented visually. In the second condition it was found that highly hypnotisable persons recalled significantly more high-imagery words under hypnosis as compared to low-hypnotisables both in the visual and auditory modality. Furthermore, high-imagery words were also better recalled by the highly hypnotisable subjects during the non-hypnotic condition. The memory effect was consistently present under both, immediate and delayed recall conditions. Taken together, the findings advance our understanding of the neural representation that underlies hypnosis and the neuropsychological correlates of hypnotic susceptibility.

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Trying to recollect past events: confidence, beliefs, and memories.

Posted At : November 4, 2005 5:11 PM | Posted By : Tim Brunson, PhD
Related Categories: Learning and Memory

Numerous studies claim to have shown that false memories can be easily created in the laboratory. However, a critical analysis of the methods employed in these studies indicates that many of them do not address memory in the strict sense of the word. Instead, some of these studies assess the confidence that participants have in a fictitious (childhood) event, while others pertain to false beliefs about childhood events. While it is difficult to draw precise demarcation lines, we argue that inflated confidence, false beliefs, and false memories are different phenomena. Keeping the origins of these studies in mind (i.e., people who file lawsuits on the basis of their recovered memories), we propose that a fruitful, but stringent definition of false memories would incorporate their consequences. Thus, we argue that this research domain would profit from studies looking explicitly at whether experimental manipulations intended to implant false memories have overt behavioral consequences.

Department of Experimental Psychology, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. tom.smeets@psychology.unimaas.nl

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Trying to recollect past events: confidence, beliefs, and memories

Posted At : November 3, 2005 4:55 PM | Posted By : Tim Brunson, PhD
Related Categories: Learning and Memory

Department of Experimental Psychology, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. tom.smeets@psychology.unimaas.nl

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Source monitoring in eyewitness memory: implicit associations, suggestions, and episodic traces

Posted At : July 3, 2005 4:28 PM | Posted By : Tim Brunson, PhD
Related Categories: Learning and Memory

Both the distinctiveness heuristic and discrepancy detection hypotheses were investigated by independently manipulating both schema consistency and incidental suggestion in an eyewitness memory paradigm. A sequence of slides was shown, followed by a postevent questionnaire that contained both schema-typical and schema-atypical information. Fifteen minutes later, a source-monitoring task was administered. In Experiment 1, the proportion of source misattribution errors was greater for schema-typical items than for schema-atypical items, and the proportion of errors on suggested items was greater than that on control items. Suggestion affected schema-typical and schema-atypical items equally, providing no support for the predictions of either hypothesis. In Experiment 2, the interval between the questionnaire and the source test was manipulated. The results of Experiment 1 were replicated under the short delay, whereas the proportion of errors increased under the long delay. An associative network model involving two types of episodic traces was used to account for the results.

Department of Psychology, University of Tampa, Tampa, Florida 33606, USA. shekkanen@ut.edu

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