Файл: Medical_Myths_Lies_and_Half-Truths_guidebook.pdf

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Lecture 18: Myths about Magnets, Microwaves, Cell Phones

Flamm, “Magnet Therapy.”

Mesmer, 

Mesmerism.

1. 

What effects do magnets have on the human body?

2. 

Why do you think magnets are such a common target for 
dubious remedies?

    Questions to Consider

    Suggested Reading

69

All about Hypnosis 

Lecture 19

Have you ever been daydreaming while driving in the car and arrived 
at your location without remembering how you got there? ... Much 
of what happens in the brain while you’re daydreaming—not paying 
attention to external stimuli, although still being able to process 
them enough to drive to your destination while imagining being
somewhere else or in another situation—is very similar to what happens 
during hypnosis. 

L

ike most people, you probably know hypnosis from what you’ve seen 
on stage or on television. An ordinary person is put into a trance-like 
state and then starts walking around clucking like a chicken on cue 

because they were hypnotized to do so. What is hypnosis really? The 

¿

 rst 

myth about hypnosis I’d like to put to rest is that it’s a trance-like state. In 
fact, it isn’t an altered state of consciousness or unique state of consciousness. 
It’s actually a state of heightened alertness. 

How do you hypnotize someone? It really just has to do with how you interact 
with the person. For example, the process might involve making someone 
more suggestible and encouraging them to relax, encouraging them to focus 
on the person who’s doing the hypnotizing, giving them small suggestions 
to reinforce their attention, and encouraging visualization. Stage hypnosis 
is different from medical hypnosis; the latter is the topic for the rest of 
this lecture.

There is a very serious neuroscience surrounding what happens in the 
brain when people are being hypnotized. These effects fall under 4 broad 
categories: increased suggestibility; heightened imagination; a lack of 
attention to sensory information, even a sense of detachment from one’s self 
or environment; and a decrease in executive function, which is the highest 
order of thinking. 

Can hypnosis be used for bene

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 cial medical or psychological effects? Let’s 

turn 

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 rst to memory. Can we hypnotize people who are having trouble 

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Lecture 19: 

All about Hypnosis

remembering details and get them to recall an event in vivid detail, as is 
often portrayed on television? It turns out that we cannot. In fact, if anything, 
the opposite is true. Hypnosis is a condition in which a person is in a high 
state of imagination and can be highly suggestible. Therefore, patients are 
likely to make up details at the slightest suggestion. 

But there are indeed some legitimate uses of hypnosis. Hypnoanesthesia is 
the use of hypnosis prior to a surgical or medical procedure to reduce the 
need for sedating medication. This usually involves self-hypnosis: The 
person uses techniques like meditation and imagery. This self-hypnosis has 
been shown to minimize, but not eliminate, the need for sedation. Local 

anesthesia is often still used. Very 
closely related to hypnoanesthesia is 
hypnoanalgesia. Reviews of evidence 
indicate that hypnoanalgesia is in fact 
useful for decreasing chronic pain. 

Cognitive hypnotherapy uses hypnosis 
to treat depression, sleep disorders, 
chronic pain, and post-traumatic 
stress disorder. The techniques 

used involve meditation, cognitive therapy, and self-hypnosis. Cognitive 
therapy is a separate part of behavioral treatment or talk therapy for all of 
these conditions, and it has independently been shown to be effective. When 
hypnosis, mainly involving meditation, is combined with cognitive therapy, 
it’s shown to have signi

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 cant advantages.

I’ve mentioned several times the notion of meditation as a form of self-
hypnosis. Meditation is not hypnosis exactly, but it is closely related. It is 
a self-induced state of relaxation. This relaxation may also involve active 
thinking, self-re

À

 ection, or an attempt to achieve a state of what is called 

mental silence—essentially thinking about nothing. 

There are two basic types of meditation and various uses to which they are 
put. One is called concentration meditation. In concentration meditation, 
practitioners focus on an object or idea as an anchor to focus their thoughts. 
In mindfulness meditation, the awareness is not focused on one thing but is 

Hypnoanesthesia is the 
use of hypnosis prior 
to a surgical or medical 
procedure to reduce the need 
for sedating medication.

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distributed as broadly as possible. Their awareness is diffused to everything 
in the environment, which puts them in a state similar to mental silence. 

There is evidence to support medical uses for these types of meditation 
for pain, blood pressure, stress management, and muscle relaxation. So 
far, though, there is no evidence to support meditation for psychological 
conditions like attention de

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 cit and hyperactivity disorder or anxiety. 

Ŷ

Jamieson, 

Hypnosis and Conscious States

. 

Lynn and Kirsch, 

Essentials of Clinical Hypnosis.

1. 

 Is hypnotism real? Do scientists know what is happening in the brain 
when someone is “hypnotized”? 

2. 

Does hypnosis have legitimate clinical uses?

    Suggested Reading

    Questions to Consider

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Lecture 20: Myths about Coma and Consciousness

Myths about Coma and Consciousness 

Lecture 20

There is a famous case of a man named Jean-Dominique Bauby, a 
French journalist, who had a stroke in 1995 at the age of 43. It left 
him locked in. He could only blink his left eye. However, he dictated 
the entire book 

The Diving Bell and the Butter

À

 y

 one letter at a time

by blinking.

T

V and movies are full of stories in which someone is in a coma and 
then at some point, maybe even after years, they wake up—largely 
neurologically intact. The media also loves stories about people 

awaking from a coma. This all contributes to a lot of confusion about what 
coma actually is. 

Coma is a disorder of consciousness or wakefulness. What are the causes 
of coma? One is trauma. Damage to enough neurons can impair the brain’s 
ability to generate enough function to be awake. Another cause is diffuse 
anoxic/ischemic injury, in which something interrupts the blood 

À

 ow to parts 

of or all of the brain. This causes enough damage to parts of the brain that 
you cannot generate consciousness. 

A completely different phenomenon that can impair consciousness is a 
seizure. A seizure is typically a synchronized, abnormal electrical function 
where brain cells start to 

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 re in unison. This can happen in one part of the 

brain or can spread throughout the brain. If a seizure occurs in enough of the 
brain, it can cause a person to be unconscious. Prolonged seizures can even 
make a person appear to be in a prolonged coma. 

One myth about coma that I want to dispel is that coma is a speci

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 c brain 

state—like a switch that is either on or off. In fact, coma is a continuum. 
Diagnosing coma offers a lot of challenges to the neurologist. The primary 
problem is that a lot of the neurological exam is based upon a person being 
awake and being able to follow complex instructions and answer complex 
questions. That enables us to probe and query the different functions of the 
different parts of the brain. Another challenge is that consciousness may be