Boosting human learning by hypnosis

Human learning and memory depend on multiple cognitive systems related to dissociable brain structures. These systems interact not only in cooperative but also sometimes competitive ways in optimizing performance. Previous studies showed that manipulations reducing the engagement of frontal lobe-med...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) N.Y. 1991), 2013-04, Vol.23 (4), p.801-805
Main Authors: Nemeth, Dezso, Janacsek, Karolina, Polner, Bertalan, Kovacs, Zoltan Ambrus
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Executive Function
Female
Humans
Hypnosis
Male
Neuropsychological Tests
Predictive Value of Tests
Reaction Time
Serial Learning - physiology
Verbal Learning - physiology
Young Adult
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Summary:Human learning and memory depend on multiple cognitive systems related to dissociable brain structures. These systems interact not only in cooperative but also sometimes competitive ways in optimizing performance. Previous studies showed that manipulations reducing the engagement of frontal lobe-mediated explicit attentional processes could lead to improved performance in striatum-related procedural learning. In our study, hypnosis was used as a tool to reduce the competition between these 2 systems. We compared learning in hypnosis and in the alert state and found that hypnosis boosted striatum-dependent sequence learning. Since frontal lobe-dependent processes are primarily affected by hypnosis, this finding could be attributed to the disruption of the explicit attentional processes. Our result sheds light not only on the competitive nature of brain systems in cognitive processes but also could have important implications for training and rehabilitation programs, especially for developing new methods to improve human learning and memory performance.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhs068