Brain Responses to Hypnotic Verbal Suggestions Predict Pain Modulation.
Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) January 1, 2021 Carolane Desmarteaux, Anouk Streff, Jen-I Chen et al. 11 citations
Listening to verbal suggestions of increased or decreased pain, after a hypnosis induction, produces brain activity changes that predict how the brain later responds to painful stimuli. Suggestions of hyperalgesia and hypoalgesia, compared to control suggestions, decreased brain activity in the parietal operculum and anterior midcingulate cortex, and increased activity in the left parahippocampal gyrus. These activity changes predicted larger pain-evoked brain responses after hyperalgesia suggestions and smaller pain-evoked responses after hypoalgesia suggestions, consistent with participants' reported pain perception. The findings suggest that verbal suggestions transform into predictive signals that modulate pain processing, supporting a predictive coding framework.