Neurophysiological Mechanisms Supporting Mindfulness Meditation-Based Pain Relief: an Updated Review
Author: Alex Jinich-Diamant1,2, Eric Garland3,4, Jennifer Baumgartner1, Nailea Gonzalez1, Gabriel Riegner1, Julia Birenbaum1, Laura Case1, Fadel Zeidan5
Affiliation:
1 Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
2 Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
3 College of Social Work, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
4 Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
5 Department of Anesthesiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA. fzeidan@health.ucsd.edu.
Conference/Journal: Curr Pain Headache Rep
Date published: 2020 Aug 17
Other:
Volume ID: 24 , Issue ID: 10 , Pages: 56 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1007/s11916-020-00890-8. , Word Count: 158
Purpose of review:
This review examines recent (2016 onwards) neuroscientific findings on the mechanisms supporting mindfulness-associated pain relief. To date, its clear that mindfulness lowers pain by engaging brain processes that are distinct from placebo and vary across meditative training level. Due to rapid developments in the field of contemplative neuroscience, an update review on the neuroimaging studies focused on mindfulness, and pain is merited.
Recent findings:
Mindfulness-based therapies produce reliably reductions in a spectrum of chronic pain conditions through psychological, physiological, and neural mechanisms supporting the modulation of evaluation and appraisal of innocuous and noxious sensory events. Neuroimaging and randomized control studies confirm that mindfulness meditation reliably reduces experimentally induced and clinical pain by engaging multiple, unique, non-opioidergic mechanisms that are distinct from placebo and which vary across meditative training level. These promising findings underscore the potential of mindfulness-based approaches to produce long-lasting improvements in pain-related symptomology.
Keywords: Analgesia; Meditation; Mindfulness; Pain.
PMID: 32803491 DOI: 10.1007/s11916-020-00890-8
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