A new study, published in the scientific journal Biological Psychiatry in late August, showed that mindfulness meditation may help reduce pain through specific brain mechanisms that are different from those that occur in the “placebo effect.” The discovery diverges from the previously widespread idea that the benefits of the technique for the symptom were related to an activation of mechanisms related to the placebo effect in the brain.
THE workled by researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine in the United States, used advanced brain imaging techniques to compare the pain-reducing effects of mindfulness meditation, a placebo cream and a “sham” mindfulness meditation in healthy participants.
The researchers found that the technique produced significant reductions in pain intensity and discomfort, while also reducing patterns of brain activity associated with the symptom and negative emotions. In contrast, the placebo cream reduced only the pattern of brain activity associated with the placebo effect, without affecting the person’s experience of pain.
“The mind is incredibly powerful, and we’re still working to understand how it can be harnessed for pain management,” says Fadel Zeidan, professor of anesthesiology and endowed professor of empathy and compassion research at the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion at UC San Diego, press release.
“By separating pain from the self and letting go of evaluative judgment, mindfulness meditation is able to directly modify how we experience pain in a way that does not use medication, costs nothing and can be practiced anywhere,” he adds.
What is the placebo effect?
The placebo effect is a phenomenon known scientifically as a mechanism by which the brain can seek ways to alleviate a symptom even when there is no use of medication or specific treatment techniques.
In clinical trials, which evaluate the effectiveness of a drug to treat a specific disease, the placebo effect is commonly seen in control groups (those who do not receive the substance being tested). These people receive a fake pill and it is expected that no one in the group will see any benefit from receiving this type of treatment. After all, it does not contain the molecule with a potential beneficial effect for a specific symptom or health condition. Still, some participants report benefit.
In the case of mindfulness meditation, the ancient technique has been used for many years to control pain in different cultures. However, for a long time, its response to symptoms was considered a “placebo effect”. The current study shows that this may be a mistake.
How was the study done?
The study included 115 participants and consisted of two separate clinical trials. They were randomly assigned to receive four interventions: a guided mindfulness meditation, a sham meditation consisting only of deep breathing, a placebo cream (petroleum jelly) that participants were trained to believe would reduce pain, and, as a control, a group that listened to an audiobook.
The researchers applied a painful but harmless heat stimulus to the back of the leg and scanned the participants’ brains before and after the interventions. The analysis of brain activity was done using multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), a technique that uses machine learning to disentangle complex neural mechanisms underlying the experience of pain.
From this, the scientists were able to identify whether mindfulness meditation and placebo involved similar or distinct brain processes. Although both the placebo cream and sham mindfulness meditation reduced pain, the researchers found that mindfulness meditation was significantly more effective at reducing pain compared to the placebo cream, sham mindfulness meditation, and controls.
Additionally, they found that the pain relief provided by mindfulness meditation reduced synchronization between brain areas involved in introspection, self-awareness, and emotional regulation. Together, these parts of the brain constitute the neural pain signal (NPS), a documented pattern of brain activity that may be common to pain across different individuals and different types of pain. In comparison, the placebo cream and sham meditation showed no significant changes in this same area.
“It has long been assumed that the placebo effect overrides the brain mechanisms triggered by active treatments, but these results suggest that when it comes to pain, this may not be the case,” Zeidan notes. “Instead, these two brain responses are completely distinct, which supports the use of mindfulness meditation as a direct intervention for chronic pain, rather than a way to engage the placebo effect.”
The researchers believe that, in the long term and with more studies, it will be possible to create more effective and accessible interventions that use the benefits of mindfulness to reduce pain in people with different health problems.
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This content was originally published in Meditation can relieve pain and is not a “placebo effect”, study shows on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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