Roger Sperry, PhD won the 1981 Nobel Prize for his studies of the difference in function of the two cerebral hemispheres. Clinical experience demonstrates that in a good trance the left brain functions are progressively shut down. Speech is a left brain function, and a subject in trance will not ordinarily initiate speech (but will answer and talk when so instructed), ordinary logic is abandoned in favor of trance logic, timekeeping sense is lost, and the analytical step-by-step sense is switched to global, metaphoric, and intuitive (right brain) processing of information.
Doing clinical work, I have found this knowledge very helpful in my understanding of what is going on with my patients as I do nonverbal (right brain) ideomotor questioning. Since most left brain functions are learned, children don’t have a lot to turn off. They are simply not yet completely on, and children live easily in daydream and trancelike states. Animals function as though they have two right brains.
We must of course be aware that hypnosis is much more than Sperry’s studies show, and that respected scientists disagree vigorously on details of its true nature. Nonetheless, it is a simple concept for me as a clinician working with a patient. I can drive a car without understanding all the machinery and electronics, and I can treat nearly all of the patients who come to my office. Sometimes a car has to be referred to a mechanic, and sometimes a patient must be referred to a more knowledgeable doctor.