Neuroimaging of meditation's effect on brain reactivity to pain.
Neuroreport August 21, 2006 David W. Orme-Johnson, Robert H Schneider, Young D Son et al.
Long-term practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation technique showed 40-50% fewer brain voxels responding to pain in the thalamus and total brain compared to matched controls. After controls learned the technique and practiced for 5 months, their pain response decreased by 40-50% in the thalamus, prefrontal cortex, total brain, and marginally in the anterior cingulate cortex. The findings suggest that Transcendental Meditation longitudinally reduces the affective/motivational dimension of the brain's response to pain.