Meditation reduces pain-related brain activity

Many people who suffer pain report feeling quite relieved through meditation practice. In the same way, some meditators say they do not feel pain when immersed in this state and even show it by sticking pins while meditating.

But why can meditation reduce or eliminate the perception of pain? And even more, how do you explain that at the brain level? A recent article in the journal Frontiers in Psychology (2014) clearly summarizes the findings of various investigations on the brain effects of this practice in relation to pain processing pathways.

As Hiroki Nakata and other Japanese collaborators write, more recent works have used neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging or magnetoencephalography to find out how meditation produces this reduction in pain, studying its effects on the brain, although so far the results have not they have always been congruent.

As they say, after reviewing the publications, their hypothesis is that meditation reduces pain because it reduces the neural activity of various areas involved in the processing of the pain signal . Specifically, it is the anterior cingulate cortex, the insula, the secondary somatosensory cortex and the thalamus.

Interestingly, the years of practice and the type of meditation technique are important variables to consider. Apparently, the ‘Open Monitoring’ exercise attenuates more painful neural activity than the practice of focused attention (Focused Attention), including the limbic system, which is very important in emotions. On the other hand, the more years of experience, the more changes at the brain level.

The authors propose three possible mechanisms by which meditation could reduce the perception of pain, although more research is needed to clarify this last question. One of the mechanisms is that meditation acts as a distractor, directing our attention to information other than pain; another, as a placebo ; and a third possibility would be by modulating the activity of what is called ‘pain matrix’, which refers to the set of neural areas that process painful information. The future will tell us how, but it seems clear that meditation has more than one health benefit.

Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain