Abstract
Recent studies have shown that meditation inhibits or relieves pain perception. To clarify the underlying mechanisms for this phenomenon, neuroimaging methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, and neurophysiological methods, such as magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography, have been used. However, it has been difficult to interpret the results, because there is some paradoxical evidence. For example, some studies reported increased neural responses to pain stimulation during meditation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and insula, whereas others showed a decrease in these regions. There have been inconsistent findings to date. Moreover, in general, since the activities of the ACC and insula are correlated with pain perception, the increase in neural activities during meditation would be related to the enhancement of pain perception rather than its reduction. These contradictions might directly contribute to the ‘mystery of meditation.’ In this review, we presented previous findings for brain regions during meditation and the anatomical changes that occurred in the brain with long-term meditation training. We then discussed the findings of previous studies that examined pain-related neural activity during meditation. We also described the brain mechanisms responsible for pain relief during meditation, and possible reasons for paradoxical evidence among previous studies. By thoroughly overviewing previous findings, we hypothesized that meditation reduces pain-related neural activity in the ACC, insula, secondary somatosensory cortex, and thalamus. We suggest that the characteristics of the modulation of this activity may depend on the kind of meditation and/or number of years of experience of meditation, which were associated with paradoxical findings among previous studies that investigated pain-related neural activities during meditation.
Highlights
Some highly trained meditators reported that they did not feel pain during meditation, and in an attempt to demonstrate this, they stuck needles into their tongues and cheeks
We recorded brain activity relating to pain perception in a Yoga master by utilizing MEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and compared differences in this activity between meditation and non-meditation (Kakigi et al, 2005a)
The Yoga master that participated in this study was very special because he had achieved the title of Yoga Samrat, indicating the highest level of proficiency, from the Indian Yoga Culture Federation in 1983
Summary
Some highly trained meditators reported that they did not feel pain during meditation, and in an attempt to demonstrate this, they stuck needles into their tongues and cheeks. Recent studies have attempted to clarify this by using neuroimaging methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and neurophysiological methods, such as magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) (Kakigi et al, 2005a; Orme-Johnson et al, 2006; Brown and Jones, 2010; Grant et al, 2011; Zeidan et al, 2011; Gard et al, 2012; Lutz et al, 2013; Villemure et al, 2014) These studies provided evidence of modulation regarding pain-related neural activity during meditation. These neural mechanisms have been considered as the ‘mystery of meditation.’
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