the FPCS to modulate

the FPCS to modulate the specific balance needed between the intrinsic and extrinsic brain systems. This may help explain why some studies have found a decrease in the DMN when hypnosis was utilized with eyes open and increases in DMN when hypnosis was employed with eyes closed (Demertzi et al., 2011; McGeown et al., 2009).

In summary, knowledge about the precise phenomenology of the embodiment of empathy and hypnosis can still be said to be at an early stage. However, it is relatively safe to say that the embodiment of hypnosis seems to involve a lot of psychophysio- logical processes that implicate empathy in the autonomic nervous system, brain, and neurohormone networks. I propose that the experience of hypnosis is accomplished through an empathic neural network that utilizes the DMN and mirror neurons to help hypnotic subjects embody the roles, response expectancies, sensations, emotions, and body language that their hypnotist suggests to them or that they present to themselves in self-hypnosis. This hypothesis is remarkably consistent with the socio-cognitive tra- dition of hypnosis since it emphasizes the social psychological aspects of how a person could come to hear a hypnotic suggestion and utilize their empathy to embody the expe- rience that has been suggested to them. This hypothesis might also explain the difficulty in defining hypnosis since it can be argued that many empathic experiences seem to create trance-like experiences, such as love at first site, becoming deeply involved with the characters in a book, having a powerful empathic experience with a client in psy- chotherapy, and/or long term meditation on one’s own phenomenological experience. The experience of trance in these seemingly non-hypnotic contexts might simply be a sign that we have utilized our empathy in a powerful way that has altered our sense of self. This leads to the next topic regarding the powerful ways that empathy can alter our experience of the self and the concept called theory of mind.