International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis
May 27, 2026
Amélie Johnson, Clara Bourgy, Marine Dupuis et al.
Hypnosis is increasingly used in clinical contexts to improve pain management and is supported by experimental research, showing reduced pain perception to controlled nociceptive stimuli. This study investigated spatial selectivity of focused hypnotic analgesia (FHA), a technique used to reduce pain in one restricted body part. Series of brief contact heat stimuli were applied randomly to the...
British Journal of Pain
February 2024
Rémi Caron-Trahan, Anne-Eva Jusseaux, Maryse Aubin et al.
Background: Nearly a quarter of Canada's population suffers from chronic pain, a long-lasting medical condition marked by physical pain and psychological suffering. Opioids are the primary treatment for pain management in this condition; yet, this approach involves several undesirable side effects. In contrast to this established approach, non-pharmacological interventions, such as medical...
Frontiers in Pain Research
2021
Carolane Desmarteaux, Anouk Streff, Jen-I Chen et al.
11 citations
Background: The effectiveness of hypnosis in reducing pain is well supported by the scientific literature. Hypnosis typically involves verbal suggestions but the mechanisms by which verbal contents are transformed into predictive signals to modulate perceptual processes remain unclear. We hypothesized that brain activity during verbal suggestions would predict the modulation of responses to...
Neuroimage
October 1, 2018
Thomas Thiery, Tarek Lajnef, Etienne Combrisson et al.
Rhythmic neuronal synchronization across large-scale networks is thought to play a key role in the regulation of conscious states. Changes in neuronal oscillation amplitude across states of consciousness have been widely reported, but little is known about possible changes in the temporal dynamics of these oscillations. The temporal structure of brain oscillations may provide novel insights...
Biological Psychology
February 2013
Joshua A Grant, Emma G Duerden, Jérôme Courtemanche et al.
Mental training techniques rooted in meditation are associated with attention improvement, increased activation and cortical thickening of attention/executive-related brain areas. Interestingly, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with behavioural deficits, hypo-activation and cortical thinning of similar networks. This study assessed the relationship between prior...
Pain
2011
Joshua A Grant, Jérôme Courtemanche, Pierre Rainville
Concepts originating from ancient Eastern texts are now being explored scientifically, leading to new insights into mind/brain function. Meditative practice, often viewed as an emotion regulation strategy, has been associated with pain reduction, low pain sensitivity, chronic pain improvement, and thickness of pain-related cortices. Zen meditation is unlike previously studied emotion regulation...
Emotion
February 1, 2010
Joshua A Grant, Jérôme Courtemanche, Emma G Duerden et al.
Zen meditation has been associated with low sensitivity on both the affective and the sensory dimensions of pain. Given reports of gray matter differences in meditators as well as between chronic pain patients and controls, the present study investigated whether differences in brain morphometry are associated with the low pain sensitivity observed in Zen practitioners. Structural MRI scans were...
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis
April 2003
Pierre Rainville, Donald D Price
Recent developments in the philosophical and neurobiological studies of consciousness provide promising frameworks to investigate the neurobiology of hypnosis. A model of consciousness phenomenology is described to demonstrate that the experiential dimensions characterizing hypnosis (relaxation and mental ease, absorption, orientation and monitoring, and self-agency) reflect basic phenomenal...
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
August 15, 2002
Pierre Rainville, Robert K Hofbauer, M Catherine Bushnell et al.
The notion of consciousness is at the core of an ongoing debate on the existence and nature of hypnotic states. Previously, we have described changes in brain activity associated with hypnosis (Rainville, Hofbauer, Paus, Duncan, Bushnell, & Price, 1999). Here, we replicate and extend those findings using positron emission tomography (PET) in 10 normal volunteers. Immediately after each of 8 PET...
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1999
Pierre Rainville, Robert K Hofbauer, T Paus et al.
The neural mechanisms underlying hypnotic states and responses to hypnotic suggestions remain largely unknown and, to date, have been studied only with indirect methods. Here, the effects of hypnosis and suggestions to alter pain perception were investigated in hypnotizable subjects by using positron emission tomography (PET) measures of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) and...