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One study has shown that mindfulness – a meditative practice focused on attention in the present moment – can increase a person's tolerance for pain. Researchers at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in the United States analyzed data obtained from a study published in 2015 that compared mindfulness meditation to placebo analgesia.
They sought to determine whether the dispositional attention, the innate or natural level of consciousness of an individual was associated with a lower sensitivity to pain and to identify the brain mechanisms involved. "Mindfulness is connected to the awareness of the present moment without much emotional reaction or judgment," said Fadel Zeidan, assistant professor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. "We now know that some people are more aware than others, and these people seem to feel less pain," said Zeidan, lead author of the study published in the journal Pain.
In the study, 76 healthy volunteers who had never meditated first completed the Freiburg Consciousness Inventory, a clinical measure of mindfulness, to determine their baseline levels. . While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, they received painful thermal stimulation.
Whole brain tests revealed that better vigilance during painful heat was associated with greater deactivation of a region of the brain called the posterior cingulate cortex, a central neural node of the default network. In addition, in those who reported higher pain, activation of this critically important cerebral region was greater.
"The results of our study showed that conscious individuals are apparently less caught in the pain experience, which was associated with lower pain reports," said Zeidan. "Now we have new ammunition to target this region of the brain in the development of effective pain therapies," he said.
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First published: September 09, 2018 12:38 PM IST
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