Hypnotic susceptibility: a lateral predisposition and altered cerebral asymmetry under hypnosis

Abstract

Psychophysiological and behavioural evidence is reported of altered cerebral asymmetry under hypnosis in favour of the right hemisphere. This occurred in Susceptible as distinct from Unsusceptible subjects. Measures included bilateral electrodermal responses to tones and bimanual processing times for sorting letters and numbers with eyes closed. Subjects listened to a tape recording of a procedure for inducing relaxation under hypnosis. Susceptible subjects, unlike Unsusceptibles, showed lateral asymmetries in baseline conditions in favour of the left hemisphere. Electrodermal responses were larger on the left than the right hand and haptic processing times were faster with the right than the left hand. Under hypnosis there was a reduction in electrodermal orienting responses coupled with faster habituation and a reversal in lateral asymmetries. Haptic processing revealed a slowing in right hand processing times whereas left hand times were reduced as was the case with bilateral processing times in both Unsusceptible subjects and controls who experienced no hypnosis. Unlike earlier reports left hemisphere dynamic processes were fundamental to the induction of hypnosis. A neuropsychological model is proposed whereby susceptibility is associated both with a left bias prior to hypnosis and left hemisphere inhibition under hypnosis. Unsusceptibles retain a right hemisphere orientation without undergoing left hemisphere inhibition. Thus hypnosis involves an inhibition of left-sided processes which permits the ascendancy of the right hemisphere through the attenuation of left hemisphere control.