Research Publications

A single session of a simple, scripted mindfulness-based intervention delivered before surgery decreased knee and hip replacement patients' preoperative pain, anxiety, and medication desire as well as accelerated their postoperative recovery of physical function.

Prescription opioid misuse among chronic pain patients is undergirded by self-regulatory deficits, affective distress, and opioid-cue reactivity. Dispositional mindfulness has been associated with enhanced self-regulation, lower distress, and adaptive autonomic responses following drug-cue exposure. We hypothesized that dispositional mindfulness might serve as a protective factor among opioid-treated chronic pain patients.

Among opioid-treated chronic pain patients, deficient response inhibition in the context of emotional distress may contribute to maladaptive pain coping and prescription opioid misuse. Study tested the hypothesis that a mindfulness-based intervention, Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), can reduce the impact of clinically relevant, negative affective interference on response inhibition function in an opioid-treated chronic pain sample.

Mindfulness-based interventions target novel pain relief mechanisms not captured by legacy pain scales, including 1) cultivating awareness of pleasant and neutral sensations proximal to unpleasant sensations and 2) interoceptive mapping of sensation location and spatial distribution.

Pain is a biopsychosocial experience that goes well beyond mere nociception. In this regard, identification of the physical pathology at the site of injury is necessary but not sufficient to explicate the complex process by which somatosensory information is transformed into the physiologic, cognitive, affective, and behavioral response labeled as pain.