Could a whiff of oxytocin help hypnosurgery?

LOOK into my eyes and sniff: a whiff of oxytocin can make even the least suggestible people amenable to hypnotism.

Richard Bryant at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues, tried to hypnotise 40 men who scored low in an initial test for hypnotisability. They gave 19 of the men a nasal spray containing oxytocin - a hormone involved in social bonding - and the rest a placebo.

Eight of those given oxytocin shifted from a low to medium level of hypnotisability, compared with just three using the placebo (Psychoneuroendocrinology, DOI: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2011.05.010).

Bryant reckons oxytocin increases trust in the hypnotist, which may be useful for Fabienne Roelants's team at Saint-Luc University Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, who compared the outcomes of people having surgery, with or without hypnosis, to remove breast tissue or part of the thyroid gland.

Those who chose hypnosis with local anaesthesia had less pain after surgery and spent less time in hospital than those who had a general anaesthetic, says Roelants. She presented the results last week at the European Society of Anaesthesiology Congress in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.