The Clinical Application And Neural Mechanism Of Hypnotic Analgesia

BackgroundAccording to neuromatrix theory of pain(2004), pain is a multidimensional experience. Psychological factors involved in the pain experience, so hypnotherapy, as a psychotherapy method, has been used in treatment of pain. But the biological mechanisms of hypnotic analgesia remains unknown.PurposeThis review summarizes clinical applications and neural mechanism studies of hypnotic analgesia for further mechanism research so that revealing its mysteries.MethodWe had searched literatures in Pubmed, Elsevier, Springerlin, Google scholar with the key words like:hypnotherapy, pain, hypnotic analgesia, clinical application, neuroimaging or neural mechanism and electroencephalogram and so forth.ResultsWe found hypnotherapy can effectively alleviate other physical discomfort and negative emotions caused by pain in addition to acute and chronic pain, including the emerging field of radioactive intervention; And related neuroimaging studies demonstrated that hypnotic analgesia could be associated with the imageological changes of the following brain regions: anterior cingulate cortex(ACC), prefrontal cortex(PC),insular, thalamus, especial midcingulate cortex. And midcingulate cortex could play a key role in regulating pain feeling, emotion, cognition, behavior in pain related brain structure. Previous Electroencephalogram (EEG) studies were in line with hypnotic analgesia, and those studies of Electroencephalogram indicated that hypnotic analgesia might be various benefit from enhancing concentration, emotion regulation and improving various aspects of cognition. In addition, there is no related Transcranial Doppler(TCD) researches were be found, possible reason may be that Transcranial Doppler is easily effected by other factors such as age, psychological factors.ConclusionsHypnotic analgesia can help relieving kinds of the pain and the clinical application of hypnotic analgesia in China is beginning. There is a preliminary exploration in the neural mechanism of hypnotic analgesia in Western countries. It’s necessary to accurately promote and popularize the hypnotic analgesia to remission the pain of patients in clinic, although in the situation of the research field is that the biological mechanism demand further researches. What’s more, It’s promising to combine the biological and psychological mechanism to interpret the mechanism of hypnotic analgesia.