Award-winning research affirms use of hypnosis in eliminating pain

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Virginia Tech

Award-winning research affirms use of hypnosis in eliminating pain

Helen Crawford knows from previous research that some people can use

hypnosis to eliminate or ameliorate pain. Her quest now is to determine why

those people can--and others can't.

Crawford, professor of psychology in the College of Science at Virginia

Tech, researches the neurophysiology of hypnosis, pain control, and

attention, and, more recently, the genetic determinants of hypnotizability.

Her work has such a presence in the international world of hypnosis research

and has made such lasting contributions that she received the 2003 Ernest R.

Hilgard Award for Scientific Excellence from the International Society of

Hypnosis. The award is named for a Stanford University professor who was a

pioneer in hypnosis research, past president of the American Psychological

Association, and member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Crawford has current projects with research scientists from several

countries. She is working with scientists in Israel on the genetic

determinants of hypnotizability, with colleagues in Austria on emotion and

laterality, and with researchers in Romania and Spain on attentional

correlates of hypnotizability.

She and her colleagues in Israel, for example, have shown that there are

genetic underpinnings to hypnotic susceptibility. They demonstrated a

relationship between hypnotic responsiveness and a genotype that predicts

performance on prefrontal executive (supervisory) cognition and working

memory tasks. This finding supports Crawford's model of hypnosis that highly

hypnotizable people " have a stronger attentional filtering system associated

with the far fronto-limbic attentional system " than do people who are not as

hypnotizable.

Crawford previously proposed that, during hypnotic analgesia, the anterior

frontal cortex of the brain plays a major role in " an inhibitory feedback

circuit that cooperates in the regulation of thalamocortical activities. "

Her work has examined the neurophysiological correlates of hypnosis and pain

control using brain-wave activity and functional magnetic resonance imaging

techniques with Virginia Tech undergraduate and graduate students in her

Neurocognition Laboratory. Her neuroimaging studies demonstrate that, during

hypnotic analgesia, highly hypnotizable people have more physiological

flexibility involving an active inhibitory process of supervisory, executive

control by the anterior frontal cortex interacting with and modulating other

parts of the brain. In other words, the executive functions of their frontal

lobe can better work with other parts of the brain in inhibiting the

perception of pain from coming to consciousness.

Crawford has worked with several physicians in the Blacksburg area to test

her work in more applied settings. With a group of individuals with chronic

low-back pain, she and her colleagues demonstrated, several years ago, that

most were moderately to highly hypnotizable and could reduce or eliminate

experimental pain such as that caused by holding a hand in ice-cold water.

" Most exciting, " she said, " was that these individuals, once they learned

hypnotic analgesia techniques in the lab, were able to transfer the learned

ability to help control their own back pain. Their psychological wellbeing

went up and their depression and levels of pain went down. "

More recently, in an ongoing study with dentist Gregg, who also teaches

at Virginia Tech and at the College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg,

and Cristian Sirbu, a visiting colleague from Babes-Bolyai University in

Romania, Crawford demonstrated similar findings within a sample of people

with temperomandibular joint (TMJ) disorder, a dysfunction of the jaw joint

that can cause such problems as headaches, facial pain, and neck aches. They

found that people with the disorder are often moderately to highly

hypnotizable and able to control experimental pain with training. " Thus

hypnosis is an excellent behavioral adjunct to more traditional approaches

to pain control such as medications, " Crawford said. Crawford recently was

invited to address the German Pain Society's annual meeting in Aachen,

Germany, and the Association for Applied Psychophysiological and

Biofeedback's annual meeting in Florida.

Her other work, done in conjunction with Neal Castagnoli and Kay Castagnoli

of the s Center for the Study of Parkinson's and Other Diseases of the

Central Nervous System, includes examining the effects of heavy smoking on

the brains of healthy young adults and the biopsychosocial differences

between teenagers who are smokers or non-smokers. For further information,

go to www.psyc.vt.edu/faculty/faculty.asp?f=hjc.