Amir Raz - Biography
Amir Raz holds the Canada Research Chair in the Cognitive Neuroscience
of Attention in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University, and heads
both the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at McGill and the Clinical
Neuroscience and Applied Cognition Laboratory at the Lady Davis
Institute for Medical Research at the Jewish General Hospital (JGH). With
peer-reviewed publications, spanning journals such as Nature, Nature
Reviews Neuroscience, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(PNAS), Psychological Science, Archives of General Psychiatry, PLoS
Medicine, and NeuroImage, Professor Raz is the recipient of multiple
accolades and is a researcher at the JGH, faculty in McGill's Department of
Psychiatry, and an associate member of the Departments of Neurology &
Neurosurgery, Psychology, and the Montreal Neurological Institute. Raz is
a clinical neuroscientist: an interdisciplinary cognitive neuroscientist with
a strong experimental approach, diplomate status with the American
Board of Psychological Hypnosis, and neuropsychological sensibilities. He has been conducting his
research in two of the top psychiatry departments in the US prior to his recent transition to McGill
University in Canada. Having studied the neural correlates of developmental psychopathology in
impulse control disorders, Raz has worked with clinical populations including Tourette's syndrome,
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance use disorders,
bulimia nervosa, and pathological gambling. His active research interests span the neural and
psychological substrates of attention, suggestion, placebos, self-regulation and effortful control. He
is also conducting research into the cognitive neuroscience of authorship processes, altered
consciousness and atypical cognition. Using imaging of the living human brain (neuroimaging),
genetics, and other state-of-the-art techniques (e.g., eye-tracking), his research brings together basic
and clinical science. Raz is a leader in unlocking the brain substrates of attention. He is Editor-inChief of the Journal of Mind-Body Regulation, a member of the McGill Board of Governors, and the
official representative of the Board of Governors on Senate at McGill.
The Magic and Neuroscience of Hypnosis
My address will appeal to both clinicians and researchers interested in attentive receptive
concentration. With hypnosis, certain individuals can change the way they experience themselves
and the environment and often display heightened compliance with suggestion. In my lab, my
students and I employ a variety of hypnotic suggestions to study experimentally the relative merits
and limits of these effects. Cognitive scientists typically distinguish between controlled (i.e.,
voluntary), and automatic (i.e., involuntary) mental processes. Controlled processes are effortful
and demand attention - for example, acquiring literacy for a neophyte - whereas automatic processes
are effortless and hardly require attention - for example, word reading for a skilled reader. Certain
cognitive functions, such as reading, become automatic through extensive practice and persistent
exposure. While multiple studies have addressed how controlled processes become automatic, few
studies have investigated how people may regain control over automatic processes. Throughout my
talk, I will describe findings showing that persons who are compliant with suggestion - highly
suggestible individuals - can de-automatize specific automatic processes. I will discuss the clinical
implications of these findings and their overarching relevance to health care.
Brief learning objectives:
1.
2.
3.
To Understand The Difference Between Top-Down And Bottom-Up Processes.
To Appreciate The Clinical Implications Of De-Automatization.
To Value The Experimental Approach Which Views Hypnosis As A Lens Onto Atypical Cognition.