News
Hypnosis Unit featured in New Scientist
Professor David Oakley's research has been featured in an article in New Scientist. The article looks at how hypnosis can be used as a tool in research to investigate neurological symptoms such as paralysis and includes a video of some of the effects
Link to the New Scientist Article
Date of next Introductory Course
September 26th 2009. Tutors: Prof David Oakley and Dr Val Walters. See prospectus for further details.
Dental Therapist of the Year
We are delighted to announce that in a ceremony held in London for the National Dental Awards 2009, one of our current HUUK students, Catherine Gray, was awarded ‘Dental Therapist of the Year’. We are delighted that Cathy felt that the HUUK course went a long way to helping her win the award.
New Programme for 2009-2010
Certificate / Diploma in Hypnosis Applied to Palliative Care'. Specialist tutors: Dr Sara Booth (Lead Clinician in Palliative Care at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust); Mr Eamonn Coveney (Consultant General Surgeon, East Suffolk Hospital); Dr Mark Barrington, Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Palliative Care, St Bartholomew's Hospital, London). See prospectus for further details
Applying for a place on our Certificate or Diploma Programmes for 2009-10?
We are now receiving applications. Download our 2009-10 prospectus
CPD programme for 2009-10
Our CPD programme runs during each academic year. These half or whole day courses cover a range of topics relevant to hypnosis and can be attended by professionals interested in finding out more about hypnosis. We have just completed our 2008-9 CPD programme and our 2009-10 programme will be posted here in August.
Hypnosis for insomnia article
A recent article in the NHS Choices website focuses on some of the work done by Val Walters with a client suffering from insomnia.
HUUK Research in the news
Research done by Matthew Whalley and Gabby Brooks at HUUK has recently been published in the journal Psychopharmacology. It shows that inhalation of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) can increase suggestibility. Click on the following links to see responses to the research:
Article in the Daily Telegraph
Article on MindHacks blog
UCL press release
Link to the study
RELAX!
Hypnosis Unit UK is an independent training organisation which replaced the prestigious UCL Hypnosis Unit. HUUK courses are taught in association with the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London and Eastman CPD, and continue to be taught at University College London (UCL).
We only train qualified professionals. We welcome applications from doctors, dentists, psychologists, and other professionals working in health and education settings.
This site contains information about our training courses, clinical services and research. For full details you can download a copy of the prospectus. You should be able to find everything you need here, if not then just get in touch.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED RESEARCH
David Oakley and Peter Halligan have written a review of neuroscientific research involving hypnosis, published in the latest edition of the journal 'Trends in Cognitive Sciences'.
The growing acceptance of consciousness as a legitimate field of enquiry and the availability of functional imaging has rekindled research interest in the use of hypnosis and suggestion to manipulate subjective experience and to gain insights into healthy and pathological cognitive functioning. Current research forms two strands. The first comprises studies exploring the cognitive and neural nature of hypnosis itself. The second employs hypnosis to explore known psychological processes using specifically targeted suggestions. An extension of this second approach involves using hypnotic suggestion to create clinically informed analogues of established structural and functional neuropsychological disorders. With functional imaging, this type of experimental neuropsychopathology offers a productive means of investigating brain activity involved in many symptom-based disorders and their related phenomenology.
Oakley, D. A., Halligan, P. W. (2009). Hypnotic suggestion and cognitive neuroscience. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 6, 264-270.
Matthew Whalley and Gabby Brooks (an HUUK graduate) have published research in the journal Psychopharmacology demonstrating that nitrous oxide (laughing gas), a commonly used sedative in dentistry and anaesthetics, can increase suggestibility and imaginative ability.
They asked 30 volunteers to come to a dental surgery to take part in a suggestibility testing study on two occasions. One time they inhaled 25% nitrous oxide, the other time they inhaled normal air. At each visit the volunteers were given a standardised test of suggestibility, and a measure of imaginative ability. Participants were also asked about whether they expected the drug to affect their suggestibility. They found that nitrous oxide increases suggestibility and imaginative ability by about 10%. When they asked volunteers which session they had received the drug they weren't very accurate at identifying the right session, so they believe that this increase in suggestibility is a real drug effect and not just a boost caused by positive expectations.
This is good news for dentists who commonly use nitrous oxide as a sedative. Dentists have long been suspected that patients are more suggestible when they are given the drug, but this is the first time that it has been demonstrated using standardised measures. A relatively low dose of nitrous oxide was used (volunteers couldn't even reliably identify when they got the drug) so it might be possible to boost suggestibility further, and adding a hypnotic induction could boost suggestibility still further.
Whalley, M. G., Brooks, G. B. (2009). Enhancement of suggestibility and imaginative ability with nitrous oxide. Psychopharmacology, 203, 745-752.
Stuart Derbyshire, Matthew Whalley, and David Oakley have published a study examining how the brain responds to pain and hypnosis.
They used hypnotic and non-hypnotic suggestions to modify the pain experiences of patients suffering from fibromyalgia, and used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activity while this was taking place. They found that both hypnotic and non-hypnotic suggestion were effective at modifying pain, but that hypnotic suggestions led to more activity in a number of regions involved in pain experience.
Derbyshire, S. W. G., Whalley, M. G., Oakley, D. A. (2008). Fibromyalgia pain and its modulation by hypnotic and non-hypnotic suggestion: an fMRI study. European Journal of Pain, 13, 542-550.