Meditation produces powerful pain-relieving effects in the brain, according to new research published in the April 6 edition of The Journal of Neuroscience.
“This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation,” said Fadel Zeidan, PhD, lead author of the study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
“We found a big effect — about a 40% reduction in pain intensity and a 57% reduction in pain unpleasantness. Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25%.”
For the study, 15 healthy volunteers who had never meditated attended four 20-minute classes to learn a meditation technique known as focused attention, a form of mindfulness meditation in which participants focus on breathing instead of thoughts and emotions.
Both before and after meditation training, study participants’ brain activity was examined using a special type of imaging, arterial spin labeling magnetic resonance imaging. During these scans, a pain-inducing heat device was placed on the participants’ right legs. This device heated a small area of their skin to 120 degrees, a temperature most people find painful, during a five-minute period.
The scans taken after meditation training showed that every participant’s pain ratings were reduced, with decreases ranging from 11% to 93%, Zeidan said.
At the same time, meditation significantly reduced brain activity in the primary somatosensory cortex, an area centrally involved in sensing the location and intensity of a painful stimulus. The scans taken before meditation training showed activity in this area was high. However, when participants meditated during the scans, activity in this important pain-processing region could not be detected.
The research also showed that meditation increased brain activity in areas including the anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and the orbito-frontal cortex.
“These areas all shape how the brain builds an experience of pain from nerve signals that are coming in from the body,” said Robert C. Coghill, PhD, senior author of the study and associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest Baptist.
“Consistent with this function, the more that these areas were activated by meditation, the more that pain was reduced. One of the reasons that meditation may have been so effective in blocking pain was that it did not work at just one place in the brain, but instead reduced pain at multiple levels of processing.”
Zeidan and colleagues believe meditation has great potential for clinical use because little training was required to produce dramatic pain-relieving effects.
“This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation,” said Fadel Zeidan, PhD, lead author of the study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
“We found a big effect — about a 40% reduction in pain intensity and a 57% reduction in pain unpleasantness. Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25%.”
For the study, 15 healthy volunteers who had never meditated attended four 20-minute classes to learn a meditation technique known as focused attention, a form of mindfulness meditation in which participants focus on breathing instead of thoughts and emotions.
Both before and after meditation training, study participants’ brain activity was examined using a special type of imaging, arterial spin labeling magnetic resonance imaging. During these scans, a pain-inducing heat device was placed on the participants’ right legs. This device heated a small area of their skin to 120 degrees, a temperature most people find painful, during a five-minute period.
The scans taken after meditation training showed that every participant’s pain ratings were reduced, with decreases ranging from 11% to 93%, Zeidan said.
At the same time, meditation significantly reduced brain activity in the primary somatosensory cortex, an area centrally involved in sensing the location and intensity of a painful stimulus. The scans taken before meditation training showed activity in this area was high. However, when participants meditated during the scans, activity in this important pain-processing region could not be detected.
The research also showed that meditation increased brain activity in areas including the anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and the orbito-frontal cortex.
“These areas all shape how the brain builds an experience of pain from nerve signals that are coming in from the body,” said Robert C. Coghill, PhD, senior author of the study and associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest Baptist.
“Consistent with this function, the more that these areas were activated by meditation, the more that pain was reduced. One of the reasons that meditation may have been so effective in blocking pain was that it did not work at just one place in the brain, but instead reduced pain at multiple levels of processing.”
Zeidan and colleagues believe meditation has great potential for clinical use because little training was required to produce dramatic pain-relieving effects.
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