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In recent decades, psychologists and psychotherapists have developed a wide range of new therapeutic approaches and strategies to increase their patients' wellbeing. Two distinct practices found to be particularly promising are mindfulness meditation and hypnosis.
While meditation and hypnosis share a few common characteristics, such as the fact that they are guided by a therapist's voice and typically require patients to close their eyes, they are based on different principles and rationales. It is thus rare to find therapists who are trained on both these approaches.
Researchers at Lyon 1 University in France recently carried out an interesting study aimed at comparing the neural dynamics underpinning mindfulness meditation with those of hypnosis using a technique known as intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG). Their paper, published in Neuroscience Letters, offers the first iEEG-based comparison between the unfolding of mindfulness meditation and hypnosis in the brain.
"The idea for this project has its origins in conversations with Dr. Antoine Lutz, who is a well-known meditation researcher, and Dr. Cécile Sabourdy, a neurologist trained also in hypnosis," Dr. Prisca Bauer, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Medical Xpress. "Meditation and hypnosis seem quite different, but they also have some common features. Although meditation and hypnosis have been studied scientifically for decades, there are very few studies comparing them."
Study explores the neural dynamics of mindfulness meditation and hypnosis
In recent decades, psychologists and psychotherapists have developed a wide range of new therapeutic approaches and strategies to increase their patients' wellbeing. Two distinct practices found to be particularly promising are mindfulness meditation and hypnosis.
