Heart-Rate Control During Pain and Suggestions of Analgesia Without Deliberate Induction of Hypnosis

Abstract

Heart rate and heart-rate variability (HRV) were studied through a set of different methods in high (highs) and low hypnotizable subjects (lows) not receiving any deliberate hypnotic induction in basal conditions (simple relaxation) and during nociceptive-pressor stimulation with and without suggestions of analgesia. ANOVA did not reveal any difference between highs and lows for heart rate and for the HRV indexes extracted from the series of the interbeat intervals (RR) of the ECG in the frequency (spectral analysis) and time domain (standard deviation, Poincare plot) in both basal and stimulation conditions. Factors possibly accounting for the results and likely responsible for an underestimation of group differences are discussed.

Watching neutral and threatening movies: Subjective experience and autonomic responses in subjects with different hypnotizability levels

“…This indicates that heart rate and heart rate variability are not sensitive enough in objective measurements of relaxation and stress, and is in line with previous observation conducted on the autonomic responses of Highs and Lows to cognitive (Sebastiani et al, 2003;Zachariae and Jorgensen, 2000;Jorgensen and Zachariae, 2002) and physical stressors (Balocchi et al, 2005;Santarcangelo et al, 2008aSantarcangelo et al, , 2008bSantarcangelo et al, , 2008cPaoletti et al, 2010aPaoletti et al, , 2010b. As previously observed (Sebastiani et al, 2003), the electrodermal activity is more sensitive than HRV.…”

The Effectiveness of Hypnosis in Reducing Pain and Suffering Among Women With Metastatic Breast Cancer and Among Women With Temporomandibular Disorder

“…Some of this undoubtedly reflects the general decline associated with a very serious disease process. Still, as per other work on serious medical disorders, hypnosis appears to be useful across diagnoses, prognoses, and experimental conditions (Marc, Rainville, & Dodin, 2008;McNeal, 2008;Nash, Levy, Tasso, & Perez, 2008;Nash, Perez, Tasso, & Levy, 2009;Santarcangelo et al, 2008;Shakibaei, Harandi, Gholamrezaei, Samoei, & Salehi, 2008). This is another impressive randomized controlled clinical trial, this time of a relatively brief hypnotic procedure for TMD.…”

Neurophysiological correlates of hypnotic analgesia

“…These aspects of hypnotic analgesia have become particularly intriguing due to the evidence that the autonomic activity is monitored in cerebral areas and this information is integrated at higher levels where it contributes to the construction of the experience (Damasio, 1999;Critchley, Wiens, Rotshtein, Ohman and Dolan, 2004;Pollatos, Schandry, Auer and Kaufmann, 2007). As recently suggested by Carli, Huber and Santarcangelo (2008), the peculiar autonomic control observed in highly hypnotizable individuals might account for possible differences in the likelihood of low and high susceptible subjects to suffer with chronic pain as well as for possible differences between the two groups in the cardiovascular damage associated with chronic pain.…”

“…Hypnosis researchers have long sought for physiological indicators of the hypnotic analgesia. Such studies have monitored the effect of hypnosis on autonomous responses such as changes in heart rate, galvanic skin responses (Pascalis and Perrone 1996; Balocchi, Varanini, Menicucci, Santarcangelo, Migliorini, Fontani and Carli, 2005;Santarcangelo, Carli, Migliorini, Fontani, Varanini and Balocchi, 2008) and endothelial function (Jambrik, Carli, Rudish, Varga, Forster and Santarcangelo, 2005). These aspects of hypnotic analgesia have become particularly intriguing due to the evidence that the autonomic activity is monitored in cerebral areas and this information is integrated at higher levels where it contributes to the construction of the experience (Damasio, 1999; Critchley, Wiens, Rotshtein, Ohman and Dolan, 2004;Pollatos, Schandry, Auer and Kaufmann, 2007).…”