A group of experimenters from Finland and Sweden obtained the first physiological evidence of the existence of hypnotic trance, having studied in detail an aspect of it that scientists had not paid attention to before
Despite the long history of the study of hypnosis, scientists still have no consensus regarding its essence. Some consider the hypnotic state to be a special, altered state of consciousness. Others argue that the secret to hypnosis lies in cognitive strategies, suggestions, and resulting mental images. The latter, they say, arise in the mind of a person who is in the most ordinary, waking state.
In other words, no one argues that people are more or less susceptible to suggestion, but researchers disagree on what hypnosis means from the point of view of physiology: is it a mixed state of the psyche (and the brain) between sleep and wakefulness, or just wakefulness, during which the subject demonstrates behavior caused by increased motivation. That is, he simply deceives himself and others.
According to ScienceDaily, now it seems that scientists will have to admit the correctness of the first point of view. After all, the Finns and Swedes for the first time scientifically proved the reality of a special physiological state of the body during hypnosis sessions.
They took up the so-called glass gaze (wide open eyes, frozen gaze). Previously, physiologists and psychologists did not consider it as a reliable sign of hypnotic trance, since this phenomenon was not demonstrated by all people immersed in hypnosis.
For their experiment, scientists chose a person who very easily fell into a hypnotic state (one key word was enough) and just as quickly (in a matter of seconds) left it.
The researchers filmed eye movements with high precision. And in order to exclude the voluntary influence of the experimental, the scientists offered him a number of visual tasks (showing “eye movement” drawings), during which an automatic reaction of the eyes is usually observed.
Promotional video:
Examples of experimental images that induce specific reflex eye movements in humans (illustration by Sakari Kallio et al./PLoS ONE).
As a result, the scientists recorded clear changes in the subject in a state of hypnosis in both automatic and voluntary eye movement and correlated the changes with this "glass gaze". But the unhypnotized subjects from the control group were unable to mimic such a look at will.