. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Oct 23.

Published in final edited form as: Nat Rev Neurol. 2014 Feb 18;10(3):167–178. doi: 10.1038/nrneurol.2014.12

Table 1.

Effects of meditation in patients with chronic pain

Brain area or bandwidth	Effect	Hypothesized function and/or behavioural correlate
Primary and secondary somatosensory cortices	Decreased pain-related activation (post-meditation)	Decreased pain processing, associated with lower self-reported pain intensity^*
Insula	Increased activation	Increased control over sensory processing among experienced meditators^‡
Bilateral insula	Increased activation (during meditation) Decreased pain-related activation (post-meditation)	Increased interoceptive awareness^§ Decreased pain processing, associated with lower self-reported pain intensity^*
Posterior and anterior insula	Increased grey matter	Thickness inversely correlated with pain sensitivity^‡
Dorsal anterior insula	Increased activation	Faster neural habituation and downregulation of pain anticipation^‡
PFC	Reduced activation Increased grey matter	Decreased executive and evaluative processing; that is, decreased negative judgements and memories about pain^‡ Thickness inversely correlated with pain sensitivity^‡
Dorsomedial PFC	Increased activation	Heightened attention^§
Dorsolateral PFC and MCC	Reduced functional connectivity	Decoupling of cognitive-evaluative and sensory-discriminative functions^‡
MCC	Increased grey matter	Thickness inversely correlated with pain sensitivity^‡
Anterior MCC	Increased activation	Faster neural habituation and downregulation of pain anticipation
Parietal cortex	Increased grey matter^*^‡	Thickness inversely correlated with pain sensitivity^‡
Anterior cingulate cortex	Increased activation	Increased interoceptive awareness²
Anterior cingulate cortex	Increased activation	Increased pain processing among experienced meditators^‡
Hippocampus	Reduced activation	Decreased evaluative processing; that is, decreased negative judgements and memories about pain^‡
Hippocampus	Increased grey matter^*^‡	Thickness inversely correlated with pain sensitivity^‡
Thalamus	Increased activation	Increased pain processing among experienced meditators^‡
Amygdala	Reduced activation	Decreased anticipation of pain negative emotional processing; that is, decreased negative emotions in response to pain^‡
Brainstem	Increased grey matter	Thickness inversely correlated with pain sensitivity^‡
Alpha activity (8–13 Hz)	Increased power in this relatively slow (inhibitory) oscillation	Alpha activity associated with reduced anxiety and greater feelings of calm and positive affect^\|\|
Theta activity (4–8 Hz)	Increased power in this very slow (inhibitory) oscillation	Theta activity associated with heightened attention, reduced anxiety and sympathetic autonomic nervous system activity, and enhanced memory functions^‡^§

Among healthy individuals (following brief training in mindfulness meditation) during experimental pain stimulation.

^‡

Among experienced meditators during painful stimulation.

^§

During meditation among healthy individuals.

^||

State and trait effects, not dependent on meditation expertise.

Abbreviations: MCC, midcingulate cortex; PFC, prefrontal cortex.