Mindfulness meditation really does relieve pain, brain scans show

Breathe in, breathe out: New brain scans show that mindfulness meditation really does relieve pain, and not because it works as a placebo.

Mindfulness meditation refers to the ancient practice of focusing attention on the present moment in a non-judgmental way — letting go of thoughts about looking stupid or doing something wrong, for example. New research shows that this practice activates specific lines of communication, or pathways between brain cells that can reduce the perception of pain.

These paths differ from those taken by the placebo effectand its activation results in a more potent analgesic effect than sham treatments.

These recent findings, published August 29 in the journal Biological psychiatrywere drawn from healthy people who were exposed to a brief, painful stimulus and then used various methods to relieve that pain. If the same results occur in patients with chronic painAccording to the study authors, mindfulness meditation could be a promising active therapy option.

Related: Meditation may have shaved 8 years off the aging of a Buddhist monk’s brain

“Millions of people live with chronic pain every day, and there may be more these people can do to reduce their pain and improve their quality of life than we previously thought,” Fadel Zeidanco-author of the study and professor of anesthesiology at the University of California, San Diego, said in a proposition.

Mindfulness meditation has been used for thousands of years in various cultures for analgesic purposesHowever, scientists have questioned whether some of the supposed pain-relieving effects actually come from the placebo effectThis phenomenon causes people to feel like their symptoms have improved, even though they have been on an inactive treatment that does not directly treat their condition.

In the new study, Zeidan and colleagues designed a series of experiments to learn more about how mindfulness meditation affects people’s experience of pain.

They recruited 115 healthy volunteers and asked them to undergo one of four interventions. One group underwent guided mindfulness meditation, led by experienced instructors. Another group participated in a “sham” mindfulness meditation that involved only deep breathing and no prompts to tune into their breathing in a nonjudgmental way. A third group applied a placebo cream—namely, Vaseline—to their legs and were told it had pain-relieving effects, while the remaining group simply listened to an audiobook.

The team conducted initial training sessions to get people used to the experimental setup and teach the meditation approaches. They then began collecting data using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which tracks blood flow through the brain to determine which areas are most active at any given time.

Three grainy brain scans shown against a white background. Blue, yellow, orange and red spots can be seen on the scans.

Mindfulness meditation affects three pain-related markers of brain activity: the NAPS (left), SIIPS-1 (middle) and NPS (right). A placebo affects only the SIIPS-1, the new study found. (Image credit: Copyright ©️ University of California Board of Trustees)

With the participants’ consent, the researchers placed a very hot probe, about 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius), on the backs of their legs while they lay in the scanner. They scanned the participants’ brains before and after the interventions and tracked changes in activity.

Each time the probe was applied, participants also rated the pain they experienced on a scale of 0 (meaning “no pain”) to 10 (the “worst pain imaginable”). Overall, the researchers found that the group that practiced mindfulness meditation reported significantly greater reductions in pain intensity than those who did the other interventions.

The brain scans revealed another, perhaps even more surprising finding: Mindfulness meditation produced significantly greater reductions in brain activity associated with pain perception and emotional experiences of pain than the other interventions. These patterns of brain activity — known, respectively, as the neurological pain signature (NPS) and the negative affective pain signature (NAPS) — had been established in previous studies of pain perception.

In other words, the brain scans confirmed what the participants’ pain reports already indicated: that mindfulness meditation actively combats pain.

On the other hand, the Vaseline only changed the activity of the so-called Stimulus Intensity Independent Pain Signature-1 (SIIPS-1) pathway. Based on last researchThis pathway is involved in determining our expectations of pain relief from a given treatment, which can then shape how we perceive pain.

This finding suggests that mindfulness meditation activates different parts of the brain than the placebo effect and that it directly reduces the brain activity that normally amplifies feelings of pain.

These “two brain responses are completely different, supporting the use of mindfulness meditation as a direct intervention for chronic pain, rather than as a way to activate the placebo effect,” Zeidan said.

However, the short-term pain tested in the study is not directly comparable to chronic pain, so more research will be needed to confirm the usefulness of meditation in that context.

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