Neural substrates of positive emotion induced in hypnosis

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24500332
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Cognitive science
• Research Institution: Kobe Gakuin University
• Principal Investigator: HASEGAWA Chihiro 神戸学院大学, 人文学部, 教授 (80551390)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): HIRONO Nobutsugu 神戸学院大学, 人文学部人間心理学科, 教授 (30346663)
• Research Collaborator: 小幡 哲史 大阪大学, 大学院医学系研究科 ; 宗佐 郁 兵庫県立西播磨総合リハビリテーションセンター ; 田中 達也 兵庫県立西播磨総合リハビリテーションセンター ; 横山 和正 兵庫県立西播磨総合リハビリテーションセンター
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 催眠 / 幸福情動 / ｆMRI / 補足運動野

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we applied hypnotic mood induction procedure (HMIP) to investigate the neural substrate of positive emotion using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). With healthy and highly hypnotizable participants, the pilot study suggested that HMIP was an effective mood induction technique because the hypnotic participants had reported their strong positive emotion under the fMRI environment. In the subsequent experiment, highly hypnotizable participants who have evoked spontaneous positive emotion showed an overactivation in left supplementary motor area (SMA) which has been reported the relations to the emotional process in previous investigations. This result indicated that HMIP was an effective technique to elicit intensive and intrinsic positive emotion, which was related to the SMA which could be the pathway of the prefrontal top-down emotion regulation circuitry.

Free Research Field

認知神経心理学