A Conceptual Review of the Psychosocial Genomics of Expectancy and Surprise: Neuroscience Perspectives about the Deep Psychobiology of Therapeutic Hypnosis

Abstract

This conceptual review explores some speculative associations between the neuroscience of expectancy and surprise during stress and therapeutic hypnosis. Current neuroscience is exploring how novel interactions between the organism and the environment initiate cascades of gene expression, protein synthesis, neurogenesis, and healing that operate via Darwinian principles of natural variation and selection on all levels from the molecular-genomic to the subjective states of consciousness. From a neuroscience perspective, the novel and surprising experiences of consciousness appear to have as important a role as expectancy in memory, learning and behavior change in the psychobiology of therapeutic hypnosis. This paper explores how we may integrate the psychosocial genomics of expectancy and surprise in therapeutic hypnosis as a complex system of creative adaptation on all levels of human experience from mind to gene expression.

Key Words:

• Adaptation
• creativity
• expectancy
• gene expression
• priming
• psychosocial genomics
• stress
• surprise
• therapeutic hypnosis