Mindfulness meditation can effectively relieve pain

For centuries, people have used mindfulness meditation to relieve pain.

But only recently have neuroscientists been able to test whether and how this works. By measuring the effects of meditation on brain activity and pain perception, a research team at the University of California, San Diego, found that meditation disrupts communication between the brain areas that mediate pain sensation and those that produce the sense of self.

During meditation, pain signals continue to be transmitted from the body to the brain, but those affected feel less identified with these pain sensations, so that their pain and suffering are significantly reduced.

«One of the central principles of mindfulness is the idea that you are not your experiences«, said the study's lead author, Fadel Zeidan, an associate professor of anaesthesiology at UC San Diego. «You practise experiencing thoughts and sensations without attaching your ego or sense of self to them, and we are now finally seeing how this manifests in the brain during the experience of acute pain«.

Professor Zeidan and his colleagues recruited 40 participants whose brains were scanned while painful heat was applied to their legs, and who were asked to rate their average pain perception during the experiment. They were then divided into two groups: one group completed four separate 20-minute mindfulness training sessions, while the other spent four sessions listening to an audiobook.

On the last day of the experiment, brain activity was measured again in all participants, with those in the mindfulness group instructed to meditate while the pain stimulus was applied to their leg. Participants who actively meditated reported a 32% reduction in pain intensity and a 33% reduction in the sensation of pain.

«We were very pleased to confirm that you don't need to be a meditation expert to experience this pain-relieving effect«, said Professor Zeidan. «This is a truly important finding for the millions of people seeking a fast-acting, non-pharmacological treatment for pain.»

The brain scans showed that mindfulness-induced pain relief was associated with a reduced connection between the thalamus — a brain region that relays incoming sensory information to the rest of the brain — and certain regions of the default mode network, a collection of brain areas responsible for self-awareness. The more these brain regions were decoupled or deactivated, the less pain participants reported.

Mindfulness meditation could therefore be a free and innovative method of pain management that integrates well into standard outpatient procedures.

«We feel we are on the verge of discovering a new, non-opioid-based pain mechanism in which the default mode network plays a decisive role in generating analgesia. We look forward to further exploring the neurobiology of mindfulness and its clinical potential across various conditions«, concluded Professor Zeidan.