Quite often, intelligent schoolchildren receive school grades that just do not appear to reflect their intelligence. These children do their schoolwork, take part in the classroom, but still get lousy test scores. Parents frequently misjudge lousy scores on exams as lack of study and preparation, but this frequently is not true. Often, anxiety over tests is a significant source of low grades.

Young people who have test anxiety typically study at home until they could answer the test questions backwards and forwards. But when they walk into the classroom and sit down to take the test, their minds freeze. They cannot recall the concepts that, only a moment before, was clear in their minds. They develop performance anxiety, and are able to consider nothing but the likelihood of failure.
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A new study points to specific areas of the brain affected by hypnosis. The technique could be a tool for exploring what happens in the brain when we suddenly forget.

Hypnosis has long been considered a valuable technique for recreating and then studying puzzling psychological phenomena. A classic example of this approach uses a technique known as posthypnotic amnesia (PHA) to model memory disorders such as functional amnesia, which involves a sudden memory loss typically due to some sort of psychological trauma (rather than to brain damage or disease). Hypnotists produce PHA by suggesting to a hypnotized person that after hypnosis he will forget particular things until he receives a “cancellation,” such as “Now you can remember everything.” PHA typically only happens when it is specifically suggested and it is much more likely to occur in those with high levels of hypnotic ability, or “high hypnotizable” people. Now a new study shows that this hypnotic state actually influences brain activity associated with memory.

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