| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| mk6283 |
Posted - 04/08/2011 : 05:59:41
From the April 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience:
Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Brain Mechanisms Supporting the Modulation of Pain by Mindfulness Meditation
Fadel Zeidan, Katherine T. Martucci, Robert A. Kraft, Nakia S. Gordon, John G. McHaffie, and Robert C. Coghill
Departments of Neurobiology and Anatomy and Biomedical Engineering
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27157
and
Psychology Department
Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53233
Abstract
The subjective experience of one's environment is constructed by interactions among sensory, cognitive, and affective processes.
For centuries, meditation has been thought to influence such processes by enabling a nonevaluative representation of sensory
events. To better understand how meditation influences the sensory experience, we used arterial spin labeling functional magnetic
resonance imaging to assess the neural mechanisms by which mindfulness meditation influences pain in healthy human participants.
After 4 d of mindfulness meditation training, meditating in the presence of noxious stimulation significantly reduced pain
unpleasantness by 57% and pain intensity ratings by 40% when compared to rest. A two-factor repeated-measures ANOVA was used to identify interactions between meditation and pain-related brain activation. Meditation reduced pain-related activation of the contralateral primary somatosensory cortex. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify brain regions associated with individual differences in the magnitude of meditation-related pain reductions. Meditation-induced reductions in pain intensity ratings were associated with increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula, areas involved in the cognitive regulation of nociceptive processing. Reductions in pain unpleasantness ratings were associated with orbitofrontal cortex activation, an area implicated in reframing the contextual evaluation of sensory events. Moreover, reductions in pain unpleasantness also were associated with thalamic deactivation, which may reflect a limbic gating mechanism involved in modifying interactions between afferent input and executive-order brain areas. Together, these data indicate that meditation engages multiple brain mechanisms that alter the construction of the subjectively available pain experience from afferent information.
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/14/5540.abstract
Best,
MK |
| 2 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| susan828 |
Posted - 04/10/2011 : 20:48:35
The thing about a journal article is that we all know that these doctors try their best to impress their colleagues. This one, however borders on the ridiculous. There's a happy medium between a doctor and a layman's language. He COULD have summed it up in the last few sentences with some non-technical jargon. Tom, I have followed your posts and I know that you know what the author is trying to convey. With a little coffee in the morning, I think we all know...but jeepers, wish he could have expressed it more clearly. I don't have the patience to decipher every word on here. To mk, I am glad you posted it in any case because we're all trying to do whatever we can regarding mindfulness, to get over this condition. Good to see a study showing that it indeed helps. |
| tennis tom |
Posted - 04/08/2011 : 16:08:44
Thanks for the article, now, is there any app that translates it into English?
DR. SARNO'S 12 DAILY REMINDERS:
http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6415
TAKE THE HOLMES-RAHE STRESS TEST
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmes_and_Rahe_stress_scale
Some of my favorite excerpts from _THE DIVIDED MIND_ :
http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2605
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"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Jiddu Krishnamurti
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