Does Meditation Reduce Pain through a Unique Neural Mechanism?

HRQoL and its association with clinical severity and service needs among individuals with a substance use disorder

“…A low score in HRQoL and high psychological burden in addition to SUD should, as a standard in clinical SUD settings, be assessed thoroughly and met with optimal services to enhance treatment attendance and thus outcomes. Reducing bodily pain perception through aerobic exercise (Hoffman &Hoffman, 2007) or adopting mindfulness-based interventions for chronic or acute pain might be examples of interventions to enhance treatment retention among these low scoring HRQoL patients (Salomons & Kucyi, 2011).…”

Trait Mindfulness Is Associated With Lower Pain Reactivity and Connectivity of the Default Mode Network

“…Similarly, long term meditative practice mitigates sensory [17][18][19] and emotional [8, 16,37] components of pain. Several studies have shown that mindfulness attenuates pain by enhancing attentional focus on the present moment and regulating associated emotional responses [4,31,43]. A growing body of work documents neural activations associated with the effects of mindfulness training on pain.…”

“…These neural findings suggest that mindfulness alters pain through a unique mechanism simultaneously involving increased attention to sensory input but reduced evaluative and negative affective responses [42,43,62]. Growing evidence demonstrates that training of attentional focus is accompanied by altered activation in areas related to cognitive control and, in particular, brain networks supporting self-referential processing, such as the default mode network (DMN) [13,28,57,61].…”

Behavioral Approaches for Primary Headaches: Recent Advances

“…Behavioral treatments produce reductions in stress, 35,42,60,61 increased sense of self-efficacy (ie, the confidence in one's ability to manage different aspects of his/her life), and reductions in the external locus of control (ie, the belief that one has limited to no ability to control life events). 63,[71][72][73][74] Furthermore, initial evidence exists on the ability of mindfulness to impact interleukine-6, 75 a marker of inflammation deemed to play a role in the regulation of pain thresholds and to facilitate pain signaling during the development of migraine headaches. 31,36,38,61,[63][64][65] Available data suggest that behavioral treatments are also useful in reducing levels of depression and anxiety commonly associated with poor prognosis in headache patients.…”

“…These studies have shown increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula, orbito-frontal cortex activation and with thalamic deactivation, thickening of cortical regions associated with pain processing, reduced activation in the amygdala, hippocampus, and emotional/evaluative regions of the prefrontal cortex, as well as increased activation in the mid-cingulate cortex, thalamus and insula. 63,[71][72][73][74] Furthermore, initial evidence exists on the ability of mindfulness to impact interleukine-6, 75 a marker of inflammation deemed to play a role in the regulation of pain thresholds and to facilitate pain signaling during the development of migraine headaches. 76,77 More investigations are needed to expand our knowledge on the mechanisms of action of behavioral approaches, as well to guide clinicians in choosing the different available behavioral approaches in their daily practice.…”