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 – August 01, 2025
Source: PubMed
Summary
Mindfulness-based treatments show promise for chronic pain management, with EEG data revealing significant insights. Out of 131 reviewed papers, only four met criteria for analysis, highlighting the topic's early exploration. Notably, higher baseline theta power correlated with improved depression outcomes in patients undergoing mindfulness interventions. Additionally, EEG source analysis indicated that emotional response regions are actively engaged during treatment. This suggests that EEG monitoring could enhance tailored non-pharmacological approaches, improving patient outcomes and identifying those who may benefit most from mindfulness strategies.
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.