Week 7 PSY10007 Lecture - Hypnosis and Drugs

Concise Version

Altered States of Consciousness

Introduction

• This week's content focuses on altered states of consciousness, specifically hypnosis and the effects of drugs.

• These differ from sleep (discussed last week) as they are not essential for survival and are deliberately chosen to alter conscious awareness.

• Daydreaming and meditation are also altered states of consciousness, but will not be covered this week.

Objectives

• Describe the core characteristics of the hypnotic state.

• Explain the factors that make someone more susceptible to hypnosis and hypnotic suggestibility.

• Describe the main theories of how hypnosis works (state versus nonstate theories and dissociation theory).

• Explain how psychoactive substances affect the brain to create an altered state of consciousness.

• Explain the role of expectations in enhancing the physiological effects of drugs.

• Describe the three main classes of psychoactive substances and the specific drugs that each class encompasses.

Hypnosis

Overview

• Hypnosis is characterized by:

  • Deep relaxation

  • Narrowed attentional focus

  • Increased responsiveness to suggestion

  • Reduced capacity for critical thinking and reality testing

• Effects observed during hypnosis include age regression, change in pain perception, and recall of memories.

• Hypnosis is brought about by special techniques and is characterized by responsiveness to suggestions for changes in experience and behavior.

• Hypnotized people are not sleeping.

• Hypnosis cannot occur unwillingly; willingness and openness are crucial.

  • The more a person wants to cooperate, the more likely they will experience hypnosis.

Experiencing Hypnosis

• Induction Procedures:

  • Focus attention on a restricted, often monotonous set of stimuli.

  • Ignore everything else while imagining certain feelings.

• Hypnotic Susceptibility/Suggestibility:

  • People with high levels have differences in brain structures.

  • They tend to be more imaginative, have a greater capacity to fantasize, are more suggestible, have a greater ability to focus attention, process information quickly and effortlessly, and have more positive attitudes about hypnosis.

• Roughly 10% of adults are difficult or impossible to hypnotize.

• Willingness to be hypnotized is the most important factor.

• Under hypnosis, people respond to suggestions and can display age regression (apparently recalling or reenacting their childhoods).

• Instructions about behavior to take place after hypnosis are called post-hypnotic suggestions and can last for hours or days.

  • Example: Hypnotherapy to quit smoking.

• Some people show post-hypnotic amnesia, which is an inability to remember what happened under hypnosis.

Key Terms

• Age Regression: Recalling childhood memories, often used to address phobias by reconciling the present self with the younger self at the initial sensitizing event.

• Post-Hypnotic Suggestion: Suggestions that last hours or days, influencing behavior after hypnosis. Example: smiling when someone says "Paris".

• Post-Hypnotic Amnesia: Inability to recall events that happened under hypnosis, even when made aware of the events.

Changes Displayed During Hypnosis (Gevzot Hillgaard)

• Reduced planfulness (ability to initiate action on their own)

• Redistributed attention (ignoring everything else but the hypnotist)

• Increased ability to fantasize

• Increased role-taking

• Reduced reality testing

Theories of Hypnosis

• State Theories: Propose that an altered state of consciousness occurs.

  • Examples: Pain management, disappearance of warts, post-hypnotic suggestions.

• Non-State Theories: Propose that there is no altered state of consciousness.

  • Example: Role theory suggests that hypnosis is not a special state but rather a placebo effect.

  • Hypnotized people are merely complying with social demands and acting in accordance with the special social role of hypnotic subject.

  • Hypnosis is merely a socially acceptable reason to follow certain suggestions.

• Dissociation Theory: A blend of state and non-state theories.

  • The hypnotic state is a result of a splitting of consciousness, where some elements remain under the control of the hypnotized person and others are ceded to the hypnotist.

Contrasting Theories

• State Theories: Altered state of brain function, responses to hypnotic suggestions are a result of some kind of special process, dissociation occurs, hypnotizability is remarkably stable.

• Non-State Theories: Placebo effect, participants would respond to suggestion almost as well without hypnosis, responses to suggestions are more a product of normal psychological processes such as attitudes, expectancies, and motivation.

Hilgard's Dissociation Theory of Hypnosis

• Hypnosis is not a specific state but a general condition in which our normal control of thoughts and actions is temporarily reorganized or broken down.

• Hypnosis activates a process called dissociation, meaning a split in consciousness.

• Normally, body movements that are under voluntary control can occur on their own, and normally involuntary processes, like reactions to pain, can be controlled voluntarily.

• This relaxation of central control occurs as part of a sort of social agreement to share control with the hypnotist.

• Hypnosis is a socially agreed display of dissociated mental functions.

Applications of Hypnosis

• Decrease pain from dental work, childbirth, surgery, and burns.

• Relieve chronic pain from arthritis, nerve damage, migraine headaches, and cancer.

• Help eliminate diarrhea.

• Reduce nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy.

• Limit surgical bleeding.

• Speed postoperative recovery.

• Treat stress related hair loss.

• Unlikely to improve memory for eyewitness recall or recovering lost memories through age regression.

Drugs

How Drugs Alter Consciousness

• Drugs alter consciousness by acting directly on neurotransmitter receptor sites in the brain.

  • Some drugs act as agonists by facilitating neural transmission.

  • Others act as antagonists by blocking the neural transmission.

• Expectations of a drug's effects may also play a role, similar to how expectations about hypnosis affect hypnotic susceptibility.

• Each class of drugs has different effects on neurotransmitter systems in the brain, although some drugs like ecstasy and heroin may have multiple effects that cross class boundaries.

Main Classes of Drugs

• Depressants: Slow down neural transmission.

  • Include alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates.

• Stimulants: Speed up neural transmission.

  • Consist of amphetamines, cocaine, caffeine, nicotine, and ecstasy.

• Hallucinogens: Cause hallucinations.

  • Include LSD and marijuana.

Visual Interpretation of Drug Effects

• Stimulants: Excite or speed up the brain and its functions, causing increased energy, faster breathing, more rapid heart rate, and higher body temperature.

• Depressants: Inhibit or slow down the brain and body, causing lowered energy, slowed breathing, slowed heart rate, and lower body temperature.

• Hallucinogens: Impair the brain and body's perception of reality, causing delusional thoughts, bizarre physical motions, and the experience of sights, sounds, tastes, and sensations that are not there.

Varying Effects of Drugs

• Predicting a drug's effect is complicated because most psychoactive drugs interact with many neurotransmitter systems.

• Drugs have desirable main effects, but many also have undesirable side effects.

Dependence

• Psychological Dependence: Continued use of a drug to gain a sense of well-being, even when it produces adverse consequences. The person can still function without the drug.

• Physical Dependence: A physiological state in which continued use of the drug is required to prevent the onset of unpleasant drug withdrawal or withdrawal syndrome.

  • Alcohol withdrawal can be life-threatening and requires medical management.

• Drug Tolerance: Increasingly large drug doses are needed to produce the same effect.

Addictive Drugs

• By affecting the regulation of dopamine and other neurotransmitters in the brain's pleasure centers, addictive drugs have the capacity to create tremendously rewarding effects.

• The changes created in the brain by drug addiction can remain long after drug use ends, increasing the chance for relapse months or even years later.

Agonist vs. Antagonist

• Agonist: A drug that occupies receptors and activates them, or a drug that mimics the effects of the neurotransmitter that normally binds to the neuroreceptor.

• Antagonist: A drug that occupies receptors but does not activate them. Antagonists block receptor activation by agonists, or a drug that binds to receptor and prevents the normal neurotransmitter from binding.

Expectations and Drug Effects

• Learned expectations can also play a role in how drug effects manifest; they are not determined by biochemistry alone.

  • People who think they've taken a drug but really haven't may display the effects of the drug because they expect to be affected by it. (Placebo effect)

Effects of Drugs

• CNS depressant drugs reduce the central nervous system activity partly by affecting the neurotransmitter GABA.

  • Include alcohol, barbiturates, and GHB.

• Central neurostimulating drugs increase central nervous system activity.

  • Include amphetamines, nicotine, caffeine, cocaine, MDMA, opiates, hallucinogenic drugs, ketamine, and marijuana.

Drug Abuse

• Users suffer distress from social, legal, or interpersonal problems.

• Creates psychological dependence and addiction (physical dependence).

• Drug tolerance: Need for greater doses because of building tolerance.

• Withdrawal: Can be fatal in some cases when discontinued use.

• Learned expectations and drug effects.

Effects of Alcohol on Neurotransmitters

• Enhances the effect of endorphins.

• Interacts with dopamine systems.

• Affects GABA activity.

• Also affects several neurotransmitters, including dopamine, endorphins, endocannabinoids, glutamate, serotonin.

Central Nervous System Stimulating Drugs

• Increase behavioral and mental activity.

• Amphetamines increase release and decrease removal of norepinephrine and dopamine.

• Cocaine increases norepinephrine and dopamine activity.

• Caffeine activates noradrenaline neurons and seems to affect the local release of dopamine.

• Nicotine enhances the action of acetylcholine and increases the release of glutamate.

• MDMA (ecstasy) increases the activity of dopamine releasing neurons and stimulates serotonin receptors.

Opiates

• Can induce sleep and relieve pain.

• Morphine and heroin have complex effects on consciousness; highly addictive class of drugs.

  • Opium, morphine, heroin, and codeine.

Hallucinogenic Drugs

• Create a loss of contact with reality.

• Alter other aspects of emotion, perception, and thought.

  • Examples: LSD, ketamine, and marijuana.

Detailed Version

Introduction

• This week's content focuses on altered states of consciousness, specifically hypnosis and the effects of drugs.

• These states differ from sleep (discussed last week) as they are not essential for survival and are deliberately chosen to alter conscious awareness. Altered states can range from mild, such as daydreaming, to profound, such as those induced by psychoactive substances.

• Daydreaming and meditation are also altered states of consciousness, but will not be covered this week. Daydreaming often occurs spontaneously and involves a shift in attention away from external tasks to internal thoughts and fantasies. Meditation, on the other hand, is a practice involving techniques aimed at increasing relaxation, reducing stress, and enhancing psychological well-being.

Objectives

• Describe the core characteristics of the hypnotic state. Hypnosis involves a focused state of attention and increased suggestibility, useful in therapeutic settings.

• Explain the factors that make someone more susceptible to hypnosis and hypnotic suggestibility. Factors influencing susceptibility include imaginative capacity, willingness to participate, and positive attitudes toward hypnosis.

• Describe the main theories of how hypnosis works (state versus nonstate theories and dissociation theory). State theories posit an altered state of consciousness, while non-state theories emphasize social and psychological factors. Dissociation theory suggests a division of consciousness.

• Explain how psychoactive substances affect the brain to create an altered state of consciousness. Psychoactive substances alter neurotransmitter activity, affecting mood, perception, and behavior.

• Explain the role of expectations in enhancing the physiological effects of drugs. Expectations can significantly influence the subjective and physiological effects of drugs through placebo effects and cognitive biases.

• Describe the three main classes of psychoactive substances and the specific drugs that each class encompasses. The main classes are depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens, each with distinct effects and mechanisms of action.

Hypnosis

Overview

• Hypnosis is characterized by:

  • Deep relaxation: A state of reduced physical and mental tension.

  • Narrowed attentional focus: Heightened concentration on specific stimuli while minimizing distractions.

  • Increased responsiveness to suggestion: Greater receptivity to instructions or ideas presented by the hypnotist.

  • Reduced capacity for critical thinking and reality testing: Decreased ability to evaluate information objectively.

• Effects observed during hypnosis include age regression, change in pain perception, and recall of memories.

• Hypnosis is brought about by special techniques and is characterized by responsiveness to suggestions for changes in experience and behavior.

• Hypnotized people are not sleeping. EEG patterns differ from those observed during sleep, indicating active mental processing.

• Hypnosis cannot occur unwillingly; willingness and openness are crucial. The more a person wants to cooperate, the more likely they will experience hypnosis.

Experiencing Hypnosis

• Induction Procedures:

  • Focus attention on a restricted, often monotonous set of stimuli. This helps to minimize external distractions and promote relaxation.

  • Ignore everything else while imagining certain feelings. Guided imagery can enhance the hypnotic experience.

• Hypnotic Susceptibility/Suggestibility:

  • People with high levels have differences in brain structures. Neuroimaging studies suggest variations in prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex.

  • They tend to be more imaginative, have a greater capacity to fantasize, are more suggestible, have a greater ability to focus attention, process information quickly and effortlessly, and have more positive attitudes about hypnosis.

• Roughly 10% of adults are difficult or impossible to hypnotize.

• Willingness to be hypnotized is the most important factor.

• Under hypnosis, people respond to suggestions and can display age regression (apparently recalling or reenacting their childhoods). This involves accessing and reliving earlier experiences.

• Instructions about behavior to take place after hypnosis are called post-hypnotic suggestions and can last for hours or days. Example: Hypnotherapy to quit smoking. These suggestions can help reinforce desired behaviors.

• Some people show post-hypnotic amnesia, which is an inability to remember what happened under hypnosis.

Key Terms

• Age Regression: Recalling childhood memories, often used to address phobias by reconciling the present self with the younger self at the initial sensitizing event. This technique can help individuals process and resolve emotional trauma.

• Post-Hypnotic Suggestion: Suggestions that last hours or days, influencing behavior after hypnosis. Example: smiling when someone says "Paris". These suggestions can be used to promote positive habits.

• Post-Hypnotic Amnesia: Inability to recall events that happened under hypnosis, even when made aware of the events. This phenomenon is not fully understood but may involve altered memory encoding.

Changes Displayed During Hypnosis (Gevzot Hillgaard)

• Reduced planfulness (ability to initiate action on their own)

• Redistributed attention (ignoring everything else but the hypnotist)

• Increased ability to fantasize

• Increased role-taking

• Reduced reality testing

Theories of Hypnosis

• State Theories: Propose that an altered state of consciousness occurs. Examples: Pain management, disappearance of warts, post-hypnotic suggestions. These theories suggest that hypnosis induces a unique neurological state.

• Non-State Theories: Propose that there is no altered state of consciousness. Example: Role theory suggests that hypnosis is not a special state but rather a placebo effect.

  • Hypnotized people are merely complying with social demands and acting in accordance with the special social role of hypnotic subject.

  • Hypnosis is merely a socially acceptable reason to follow certain suggestions.

• Dissociation Theory: A blend of state and non-state theories. The hypnotic state is a result of a splitting of consciousness, where some elements remain under the control of the hypnotized person and others are ceded to the hypnotist.

Contrasting Theories

• State Theories: Altered state of brain function, responses to hypnotic suggestions are a result of some kind of special process, dissociation occurs, hypnotizability is remarkably stable.

• Non-State Theories: Placebo effect, participants would respond to suggestion almost as well without hypnosis, responses to suggestions are more a product of normal psychological processes such as attitudes, expectancies, and motivation.

Hilgard's Dissociation Theory of Hypnosis

• Hypnosis is not a specific state but a general condition in which our normal control of thoughts and actions is temporarily reorganized or broken down.

• Hypnosis activates a process called dissociation, meaning a split in consciousness.

• Normally, body movements that are under voluntary control can occur on their own, and normally involuntary processes, like reactions to pain, can be controlled voluntarily.

• This relaxation of central control occurs as part of a sort of social agreement to share control with the hypnotist.

• Hypnosis is a socially agreed display of dissociated mental functions.

Applications of Hypnosis

• Decrease pain from dental work, childbirth, surgery, and burns. Hypnosis can modulate pain pathways in the brain.

• Relieve chronic pain from arthritis, nerve damage, migraine headaches, and cancer. Hypnosis may reduce reliance on pain medication.

• Help eliminate diarrhea. Hypnosis can influence gastrointestinal function.

• Reduce nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy. Hypnosis can mitigate the side effects of cancer treatment.

• Limit surgical bleeding. Hypnosis may affect autonomic nervous system responses.

• Speed postoperative recovery. Reduced stress and anxiety can promote healing.

• Treat stress related hair loss. Hypnosis can address psychological factors contributing to hair loss.

• Unlikely to improve memory for eyewitness recall or recovering lost memories through age regression. Memories recovered under hypnosis are unreliable and may be influenced by suggestion.

Drugs

How Drugs Alter Consciousness

• Drugs alter consciousness by acting directly on neurotransmitter receptor sites in the brain. Some drugs act as agonists by facilitating neural transmission. Others act as antagonists by blocking the neural transmission.

• Expectations of a drug's effects may also play a role, similar to how expectations about hypnosis affect hypnotic susceptibility. The placebo effect can significantly alter drug outcomes.

• Each class of drugs has different effects on neurotransmitter systems in the brain, although some drugs like ecstasy and heroin may have multiple effects that cross class boundaries.

Main Classes of Drugs

• Depressants: Slow down neural transmission. Include alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates. These substances reduce CNS activity.

• Stimulants: Speed up neural transmission. Consist of amphetamines, cocaine, caffeine, nicotine, and ecstasy. These substances increase CNS activity.

• Hallucinogens: Cause hallucinations. Include LSD and marijuana. These substances alter perception and cognition.

Visual Interpretation of Drug Effects

• Stimulants: Excite or speed up the brain and its functions, causing increased energy, faster breathing, more rapid heart rate, and higher body temperature.

• Depressants: Inhibit or slow down the brain and body, causing lowered energy, slowed breathing, slowed heart rate, and lower body temperature.

• Hallucinogens: Impair the brain and body's perception of reality, causing delusional thoughts, bizarre physical motions, and the experience of sights, sounds, tastes, and sensations that are not there.

Varying Effects of Drugs

• Predicting a drug's effect is complicated because most psychoactive drugs interact with many neurotransmitter systems.

• Drugs have desirable main effects, but many also have undesirable side effects.

Dependence

• Psychological Dependence: Continued use of a drug to gain a sense of well-being, even when it produces adverse consequences. The person can still function without the drug.

• Physical Dependence: A physiological state in which continued use of the drug is required to prevent the onset of unpleasant drug withdrawal or withdrawal syndrome. Alcohol withdrawal can be life-threatening and requires medical management.

• Drug Tolerance: Increasingly large drug doses are needed to produce the same effect.

Addictive Drugs

• By affecting the regulation of dopamine and other neurotransmitters in the brain's pleasure centers, addictive drugs have the capacity to create tremendously rewarding effects.

• The changes created in the brain by drug addiction can remain long after drug use ends, increasing the chance for relapse months or even years later.

Agonist vs. Antagonist

• Agonist: A drug that occupies receptors and activates them, or a drug that mimics the effects of the neurotransmitter that normally binds to the neuroreceptor.

• Antagonist: A drug that occupies receptors but does not activate them. Antagonists block receptor activation by agonists, or a drug that binds to receptor and prevents the normal neurotransmitter from binding.

Expectations and Drug Effects

• Learned expectations can also play a role in how drug effects manifest; they are not determined by biochemistry alone. People who think they've taken a drug but really haven't may display the effects of the drug because they expect to be affected by it. (Placebo effect)

Effects of Drugs

• CNS depressant drugs reduce the central nervous system activity partly by affecting the neurotransmitter GABA. Include alcohol, barbiturates, and GHB.

• Central neurostimulating drugs increase central nervous system activity. Include amphetamines, nicotine, caffeine, cocaine, MDMA, opiates, hallucinogenic drugs, ketamine, and marijuana.

Drug Abuse

• Users suffer distress from social, legal, or interpersonal problems.

• Creates psychological dependence and addiction (physical dependence).

• Drug tolerance: Need for greater doses because of building tolerance.

• Withdrawal: Can be fatal in some cases when discontinued use.

• Learned expectations and drug effects.

Effects of Alcohol on Neurotransmitters

• Enhances the effect of endorphins.

• Interacts with dopamine systems.

• Affects GABA activity.

• Also affects several neurotransmitters, including dopamine, endorphins, endocannabinoids, glutamate, serotonin.

Central Nervous System Stimulating Drugs

• Increase behavioral and mental activity.

• Amphetamines increase release and decrease removal of norepinephrine and dopamine.

• Cocaine increases norepinephrine and dopamine activity.

• Caffeine activates noradrenaline neurons and seems to affect the local release of dopamine.

• Nicotine enhances the action of acetylcholine and increases the release of glutamate.

• MDMA (ecstasy) increases the activity of dopamine releasing neurons and stimulates serotonin receptors.

Opiates

• Can induce sleep and relieve pain.

• Morphine and heroin have complex effects on consciousness; highly addictive class of drugs.

  • Opium, morphine, heroin, and codeine.

Hallucinogenic Drugs

• Create a loss of contact with reality.

• Alter other aspects of emotion, perception, and thought. Examples: LSD, ketamine, and marijuana.

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