Mindfulness meditation and placebo modulate distinct multivariate neural signatures to reduce pain

Rather than a passive reflection of nociception, pain is shaped by the interplay between one's experiences, current cognitive-affective states, and expectations. The placebo-response, a paradoxical yet reliable phenomenon, is postulated to reduce pain by engaging mechanisms shared with "active" therapies. It has been assumed that mindfulness meditation, practiced by sustaining nonjudgmental awareness of arising sensory events, merely reflects mechanisms evoked by placebo. Recently, brain-based multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) has been validated to successfully disentangle nociceptive-specific, negative-affective, and placebo-based dimensions of the subjective pain experience.