Prediction of hypnotic trance with brain-evoked responses to an auditory oddball using magnetoencephalography.
Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual International Conference July 1, 2025 H Sid-Ahmed, J Alayrangues, L Langar et al.
Hypnosis alters consciousness and is used for pain management, but assessing hypnotic trance relies on subjective signs. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and an auditory oddball paradigm, brain signals were recorded from 20 healthy subjects during critical consciousness, hypnotic trance, and distraction. Feature extraction and classification models were tested; EEGNet performed best, achieving 70% and 84% ROC-AUC in distinguishing hypnotic trance from critical consciousness and distraction, respectively, with predictions every 4 seconds after a 19-minute training session. This method offers real-time, objective assessment of hypnotic trance and could be adapted for clinical use with electroencephalography (EEG).