Dr. David Spiegel

That's well put.

And that's true.

Basically, we had people look at color versus black and white and what happened in the occipital cortex, which is where we process vision, including color.

And then in another condition, we hypnotized them and had them imagine that they were looking at color when it was really black and white.

And we had increased activity in the color processing regions of the brain.

So, you know, believing is seeing, you know, but seeing is believing.

That's the remarkable thing.

But in a way, Sanjay, it's just like what you've written about with pain.

You can change your experience.

One of the common things I do for pain control is I just say, what do you naturally do to relieve the pain?

Do you take a warm bath?

Do you take a cold shower?

Do you use ice?

And I have them go into a state of self-hypnosis and imagine that that's what they're doing.

You're in the warm bath, filter the hurt out of the pain.

And what you're doing is just like in that color experiment, you're getting your brain to process as though it were having that kind of perceptual experience.

And why shouldn't it?

Why should it be able to do that?

I remember what that was like.

It's just like when you think back about a beautiful scene you saw on a vacation.