In the last decade we have witnessed some newly restored interest about therapeutic effects of hypnosis and studies that utilize hypnotic suggestions to directly research broad spectrum of cognitive phenomena and also as valuable tool to diagnosticize pathological processes and states. Maybe this shows a fresh trend in development of research approaches on the fields of cognitive and clinical neuroscience (Oakley, & Halligan, 2013). In the research, electroencephalograph (EEG) was used to determine the effects of medical hypnosis on attention and working memory in comparison with control condition and condition of effort justification. 21 participants voluntarily solved phenomenology questionnaire PCI (Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory, Form 1) and were according to their results (susceptibility to hypnosis) divided into three groups (Pekala, 2009). Experiment started with first dual-task oddball as control and continued in a crossover sequence of the two treatments (hypnosis, effort justification), so second and third tests were preceded by either receiving medicinal hypnosis treatment or watching non-specific relaxation videos as a form of effort justification. Task performance efficiency was determined by participant’s responses to visual display of target (keystroke) for attention and distractor stimuli (memorizing number of displays) for working memory. Analysis of variance of EEG results for attention showed that condition of therapy with medicinal hypnosis had a statistically significant effect in comparison to the effects of control condition for all groups of participants, as did reveal EEG results for working memory, but only for the group of participants, highly susceptible to hypnosis. All comparisons to the effects of effort justification condition were proven to be statistically insignificant. According to our findings we can partialy confrim that therapy with medcinal hypnosis has a beneficial effect on attention and working memory.
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