Neural and Physiological Mechanisms Supporting Mindfulness-Based Analgesia as Compared to Placebo

The IASP defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage" to better articulate the biopsychosocial dimensions of this phenomenon. While our understanding of pain has greatly evolved over the past decades, there are still fundamental questions that need to be addressed, including its psychological components.

Various analyses indicate mindfulness-based meditation to be efficacious for chronic and acute pain management, however, most available studies lack appropriate controls. As such, placebo-related processes could account for these positive mindfulness effects. Therefore, a mechanistic understanding of mindfulness processes is required to disentangle the analgesic effects of mindfulness from placebo-related processes. In this webinar, we took a deep-dive into the neural and physiological mechanisms supporting mindfulness-based analgesia that distinguish this treatment from placebo-related processes.

Participants include:
Fadel Zeidan, PhD 
Luana Colloca, MD, PhD