Hypnotic suggestions and brain activity Amir Raz of McGill University (left/rear), conducting research on the influence of hypnotic states on mind and brain. In the research shown here, a participant is performing a cognitive task you learned about in Chapter 2: the Stroop task. Findings show that hypnotic suggestions can influence information processing and brain activity during the task. Among highly hypnotizable persons, the suggestion that English language letters are actually “meaningless symbols” reduces activity in a brain system, the anterior cingulate cortex, that is active when people face conflicts between two responses—