title: Mindfulness meditation-related pain relief: evidence for unique brain mechanisms in the regulation of pain.
abstract: The cognitive modulation of pain is influenced by a number of factors ranging from attention, beliefs, conditioning, expectations, mood, and the regulation of emotional responses to noxious sensory events. Recently, mindfulness meditation has been found attenuate pain through some of these mechanisms including enhanced cognitive and emotional control, as well as altering the contextual evaluation of sensory events. This review discusses the brain mechanisms involved in mindfulness meditation-related pain relief across different meditative techniques, expertise and training levels, experimental procedures, and neuroimaging methodologies. Converging lines of neuroimaging evidence reveal that mindfulness meditation-related pain relief is associated with unique appraisal cognitive processes depending on expertise level and meditation tradition. Moreover, it is postulated that mindfulness meditation-related pain relief may share a common final pathway with other cognitive techniques in the modulation of pain.
authors.affiliation: Wake Forest School of Medicine, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Winston-Salem, NC, United States. fzeidan@wakehealth.edu
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zeidan
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Grant
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: J G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: McHaffie
authors.forename: R C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Coghill
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; D006801:Humans; D019122:Meditation / Q000379:methods*; D059906:Neuroimaging; D010146:Pain / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D059408:Pain Management / Q000379:methods*