Functional Changes in Brain Activity after Hypnosis in Patients with Dental Phobia

Publication date: Available online 6 October 2016 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris Author(s): Ulrike Halsband, Thomas Gerhard Wolf Visiting the dentist is often accompanied by apprehension or anxiety. People, who suffer from specific dental phobia, a disproportional fear of dental procedures show psychological and physiological symptoms which make dental treatments difficult or impossible. For such purposes, hypnosis is often used in dental practice as an alternative for a number of treatments adjuvant or instead of sedation or general anesthetic, as medication is often associated with risks and side effects. This is the first study to address the effects of a brief dental hypnosis on the fear processing structures of the brain in dental phobics using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). 12 dental phobics (DP; mean 34.9 years) and 12 healthy controls (CO; mean 33.2 years) were scanned with a 3T MRI whole body-scanner observing brain activity changes after a brief hypnotic invervention. An fMRI event-related design symptom provocation task applying audio-visual pseudorandomized strong phobic stimuli were presented in order to maximize the fearful reactions during scanning with video sets; control videos showed the use of familiar electronic household equipment. In DP group, main effects of fear condition were found in the left amygdala, bilateral ACC, bilateral insula and bilateral hippocampus (R>L). During hypnosis DP showed a significantly reduced activ...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - Category: Physiology Source Type: research