An investigation of the topographic organization of cortical electrical activity during hypnotic analgesia

Consciousness and the Selection of Information

“…Although no obvious results and conclusions on this question have yet been obtained, there are isolated indications that a change in the threshold of cognition of emotionally significant words influences the characteristics of cerebral activity [23]. In our studies [15], we found that people with a low threshold of responsiveness to a pain stimulus showed a greater intensification of highfrequency EEG components compared with the opposite type of individuals. A weakening of pain sensations under the influence of hypnotic analgesia is accompanied by spatial-frequency reorganizations, evidence of a normalization and a restoration of cerebral activity to the initial level, i.e., a rise in the threshold of pain perception signifies a stabilization and "shielding" of the motivational-affective and integrational components of the system by which information becomes conscious.…”

“…One can say, on the basis of the findings, that many factors are involved in the system influencing the processes by which information becomes conscious. The central regulator in this case is evidently a change in the threshold of activation of motivational-affective and associative-integrational centers; this has been conf m e d in our experiments in which a model of hypnotic analgesia was used [15]. Pain stimuli were applied to the left forearm before and after the subject fell into a hypnotic trance.…”