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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2023
For millenniums, mindfulness was believed to diminish pain by reducing the influence of self-appraisals of noxious sensations. Today, mindfulness meditation is a highly popular and effective pain therapy that is believed to engage multiple, nonplacebo-related mechanisms to attenuate pain. Recent evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation-induced pain relief is associated with the engagement of unique cortico-thalamo-cortical nociceptive filtering mechanisms. The proposed talk will provide a succinct, yet comprehensive delineation demonstrating that brief mindfulness-based mental training significantly reduces acutely evoked chronic low back pain through non-opioidergic mechanisms. Recent findings indicate that mindfulness-based pain relief, after brief mental training, can significantly uncouple self-referential from nociceptive neural mechanisms, an important finding for the millions of individuals seeking a fast-acting and non-pharmacologic pain treatment. Upon conclusion of this course, learners will be able to:
1. Recognize if mindfulness reduces pain
2. Describe brain mechanisms supporting mindfulness-based pain relief
3. List the physiological systems supporting mindfulness