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State of the art in EEG signal features of mindfulness-based treatments for chronic pain.

Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology
March 29, 2025
D Duran et al. (9 authors)
Journal ArticleReviewHuman Study
Study Details

Study Goal

The researchers aimed to identify EEG correlates of Mindfulness-based treatment for chronic pain and assess its potential for efficacy evaluation and patient selection.

Results Summary

The study found that pain-related evoked potentials and baseline theta power correlate with Mindfulness-based treatment outcomes, suggesting EEG may help predict treatment efficacy and patient suitability. However, the limited number of studies and variability in results indicate the need for further research.

Population

Individuals with chronic pain.

Effective Dosage

Not specified

Duration

Not specified

Interactions

None mentioned

Extracted Claims (3)
InterventionDirectionEndpointPopulationDosageImpactClaim #
Mindfulness-based treatment
neutral
pain-related evoked potentials
chronic pain patients
-
correlate with
#1
Mindfulness-based treatment
neutral
regions modulating emotional responses
-
-
revealed the prevalent involvement of
#2
Mindfulness-based treatments
increase
depression
-
-
greater improvement in
#3
Abstract

A systematic review of electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates of Mindfulness- based treatment for chronic pain is presented. Recent technological advances have made EEG acquisition more accessible and also reliable. EEG monitoring before, during, and after treatment might support efficacy assessment and enable real- time adaptive intervention. The preliminary research extracted 131 papers from 6 scientific search engines. The application of the exclusion criteria led to the selection of 4 papers, indicating that the topic is still unexplored and further investigations are required. The collected papers exhibited great variability making challenging the comparison, nevertheless promising EEG correlates emerged. In particular, pain-related evoked potentials correlate with Mindfulness-Based treatment. EEG source analysis revealed the prevalent involvement of regions modulating emotional responses. In addition, higher baseline theta power was associated with greater improvement in depression when Mindfulness-based treatments are administered. This last result makes EEG also suitable for evaluating which patients can benefit most from mindfulness-based treatments.

Study Links
Quality Scores
SafetyNot Assessed
Efficacy70/10
Quality65/10
Research Impact Scores
APT Score0.05
Weight Score2.30
Normalized Score0.61
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