When I read about studies like these I always wonder how the placebo is done.
Here it is actually stated: "sham meditation" and petroleum jelly cream.
One of the problems with this is that the experimentors would know who got the placebo and who did not.
I don't think it is far fetched than a subject would sense whether they were being taught mindfulness mediation which the experimentor perceived as being genuine or "sham meditation" which the experimentor knew to be false.
Whether a subject perceives she is undergoing an effective treatment obviously will effect the placebo effect and probably also show on brain scans.
Hm. Double-blind studies are supposed to measure whether a medical effect is real or all in your head. But meditation is, in a sense, "all in your head" either way. If a patient who genuinely believes that they are doing pain-relieving mindfulness meditation enters a mental state in which pain is relieved, does it matter if that state is "real" mindful meditation or not?
True - which is why they did the cream as well. At the very least, this study tells us that the mindfulness meditation is a 'more effective' placebo than the cream.
It's very hard do really do in a 'double blind' way - I would not be able to think of something that is to all appearances equal to the real mindfulness mediation, but actually only a fake. There's no substance to it.
You will end up managing your emotions more efficiently, which is extremely useful for people who need to stay away from d e p r e s s i o n and a n x i e t y.
75 subjects divided into 4 groups, so about 19 people per group.
Suppose the study was studying the effect of coin tosses per group. The standard deviation is sqrt(19)/19 or about 23%. And that is only one sigma.
So we might also conclude that those who flip heads are <insert effect here> than those who flip tails. Is anyone really surprised that the reproducibility study [1] found reproducibility comparable that of a coin toss (to about one sigma)?
The std. dev. of a binomial is sqrt(n p (1-p)). So for 19 coin flips that's ~2.2, or 11%, not 23%.
Plus your setup is not relevant to the setup that they performed (check figure 3).
I am not so surprised that many studies are not replicated, but I also am not surprised when critical internet comments are weaker than the analysis they criticize.
"Mindfulness meditation reduced pain by activating brain regions (orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortex) associated with the self-control of pain while the placebo cream lowered pain by reducing brain activity in pain-processing areas (secondary somatosensory cortex).
Another brain region, the thalamus, was deactivated during mindfulness meditation, but was activated during all other conditions. This brain region serves as a gateway that determines if sensory information is allowed to reach higher brain centers. By deactivating this area, mindfulness meditation may have caused signals about pain to simply fade away, Zeidan said."
Placebo is just a derrogatory term for the fact that your mind influences your body and your perception of what is real.
It is a perversion of capitalist societies to only accept a physical and obvious influence as being able to change something.
The trick is - our mind is physical - at least physically manifested - and so it should be evident for even mildly educated people that your mind can affect your body.
So instead of disregarding placebo as some bullshit that is used to test whether something actually works - why not invest some time and money into perfecting the application of placebo effects?
Well, and here we are back to the mechanisms of capitalism - you couldn't sell that very well ... that's the problem.
And if you think about it - perfecting the reliability and effect of placebo "medication" would inevitably lead in a straight path to ... meditation.
There's a great book called Mindfulness in Plain English, which I've been recommending for some time. It's direct, to the point, and addresses many topics such as distractions, pain during practice, exactly how to prepare, and of course what to do with your mind.
I'd recommend something in the spectrum of Jon Kabat Zinn's work in whatever format you prefer. For casual interest, you can find him guiding mediations on youtube or buy any of his older books for pretty much nothing on used book sites.
People with chronic pain or health issues may want something with more support like the stress clinic at UMASS lowell medical. But you really only need about 15 minutes of instruction and guided meditation and then to find whatever motivators work for you.
I've really enjoyed "Search Inside Yourself," a book by the person who runs the courses at Google. It takes an engineering eye to the benefits of mindfulness.
From the footer of the press release kindly submitted here:
"Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length."
It helps the quality of discussion here on Hacker News, especially the quality of discussion of medical topics, to prefer sources other than press releases and press release recycling services like ScienceDaily for news on medical topics. Most new medical study findings are never replicated and are presumptively false.[1] Most study findings about placebo effects do not take into account the complications of defining what a placebo is, really, in a clinical trial context or what mechanisms might produce a placebo effect.[2] The small-n study reported here relies on subject patient measures of a subjective symptom, pain, and doesn't suggest any actual clinical effect on patients that can be objectively measured (such as reduction of tissue damage).
Press releases are a known part of the science hype cycle used to draw in more funding for research labs.[3] Let's go behind the hype and see what experienced science journalists and other scientists say about each lab's press release before opening discussion here.
Anyway, Hacker News participants have been saying for years that it's a good idea to look for better sources than Science Daily.[4] If Science Daily is the only place of publication for a finding, I find it more useful to look for another source before presuming the hyped finding represents a fact about the world.
[1] "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False", John P. A. Ioannidis, August 30, 2005
"Everything I've ever seen on HN -- I don't know about Reddit -- from ScienceDaily has been a cut-and-paste copy of something else available from nearer the original source. In some cases ScienceDaily's copy is distinctly worse than the original because it lacks relevant links, enlightening pictures, etc.
" . . . . if you find something there and feel like sharing it, it's pretty much always best to take ten seconds to find the original source and submit that instead of ScienceDaily."
Both "mindless" meditation and mindful meditation have their purpose. They are not the same thing, and people who do not practice meditation do not understand they are different.
I find both extremely important in maintaining my mental state during times of stress. A half hour of meditation a day keeps the mental hospital away.
[+] [-] chvid|10 years ago|reply
Here it is actually stated: "sham meditation" and petroleum jelly cream.
One of the problems with this is that the experimentors would know who got the placebo and who did not.
I don't think it is far fetched than a subject would sense whether they were being taught mindfulness mediation which the experimentor perceived as being genuine or "sham meditation" which the experimentor knew to be false.
Whether a subject perceives she is undergoing an effective treatment obviously will effect the placebo effect and probably also show on brain scans.
[+] [-] PhasmaFelis|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhdevos|10 years ago|reply
It's very hard do really do in a 'double blind' way - I would not be able to think of something that is to all appearances equal to the real mindfulness mediation, but actually only a fake. There's no substance to it.
Do you have any suggestions to do it better?
[+] [-] benevol|10 years ago|reply
Another one is stress reduction, leading to a stronger immune system, less asthma, improved digestion, etc.
The main point is probably that you rewire your brain: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to... which means doing it on a regular basis improves your hardware, not just your software.
You will end up managing your emotions more efficiently, which is extremely useful for people who need to stay away from d e p r e s s i o n and a n x i e t y.
[+] [-] zuck9|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpmattia|10 years ago|reply
Suppose the study was studying the effect of coin tosses per group. The standard deviation is sqrt(19)/19 or about 23%. And that is only one sigma.
So we might also conclude that those who flip heads are <insert effect here> than those who flip tails. Is anyone really surprised that the reproducibility study [1] found reproducibility comparable that of a coin toss (to about one sigma)?
[1] http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f...
[+] [-] epistasis|10 years ago|reply
Plus your setup is not relevant to the setup that they performed (check figure 3).
I am not so surprised that many studies are not replicated, but I also am not surprised when critical internet comments are weaker than the analysis they criticize.
[+] [-] nns|10 years ago|reply
Another brain region, the thalamus, was deactivated during mindfulness meditation, but was activated during all other conditions. This brain region serves as a gateway that determines if sensory information is allowed to reach higher brain centers. By deactivating this area, mindfulness meditation may have caused signals about pain to simply fade away, Zeidan said."
[+] [-] jamesk_au|10 years ago|reply
http://jn.sfn.org/press/November-18-2015-Issue/zns0461501530...
Fascinating results.
[+] [-] plusquamperfekt|10 years ago|reply
It is a perversion of capitalist societies to only accept a physical and obvious influence as being able to change something.
The trick is - our mind is physical - at least physically manifested - and so it should be evident for even mildly educated people that your mind can affect your body.
So instead of disregarding placebo as some bullshit that is used to test whether something actually works - why not invest some time and money into perfecting the application of placebo effects?
Well, and here we are back to the mechanisms of capitalism - you couldn't sell that very well ... that's the problem.
And if you think about it - perfecting the reliability and effect of placebo "medication" would inevitably lead in a straight path to ... meditation.
[+] [-] hobo_mark|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ue_|10 years ago|reply
I think this is complete: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html
But it's always nice to have something in paperback or Kindle: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Anniversar...
The printed edition also has a nice afterword.
[+] [-] rikibro|10 years ago|reply
If you have the time, it can be one of the most unique and life changing experiences, in a good way, one can have.
[+] [-] Menge|10 years ago|reply
People with chronic pain or health issues may want something with more support like the stress clinic at UMASS lowell medical. But you really only need about 15 minutes of instruction and guided meditation and then to find whatever motivators work for you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn
[+] [-] jpbutler|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] howlingfantods|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenadult|10 years ago|reply
"Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length."
It helps the quality of discussion here on Hacker News, especially the quality of discussion of medical topics, to prefer sources other than press releases and press release recycling services like ScienceDaily for news on medical topics. Most new medical study findings are never replicated and are presumptively false.[1] Most study findings about placebo effects do not take into account the complications of defining what a placebo is, really, in a clinical trial context or what mechanisms might produce a placebo effect.[2] The small-n study reported here relies on subject patient measures of a subjective symptom, pain, and doesn't suggest any actual clinical effect on patients that can be objectively measured (such as reduction of tissue damage).
Press releases are a known part of the science hype cycle used to draw in more funding for research labs.[3] Let's go behind the hype and see what experienced science journalists and other scientists say about each lab's press release before opening discussion here.
Anyway, Hacker News participants have been saying for years that it's a good idea to look for better sources than Science Daily.[4] If Science Daily is the only place of publication for a finding, I find it more useful to look for another source before presuming the hyped finding represents a fact about the world.
[1] "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False", John P. A. Ioannidis, August 30, 2005
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...
[2] "Are Placebos Getting Stronger?" Steven Novella, October 21, 2015
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-placebos-getting-st...
"Placebo by Conditioning", Steven Novella, July 29, 2015
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/placebo-by-conditioning...
"Placebo, Are You There?" Harriet Hall February 24, 2015
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/placebo-are-you-there/
[3] "The Science News Cycle"
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
"Related by coincidence only? University and medical journal press releases versus journal articles"
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/related-by-coi...
"Anatomy of a Press Release"
http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/06/21/anatomy-of-a-press-rel...
[4] Comments about ScienceDaily:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992206
"Blogspam.
"Original article (to which ScienceDaily has added precisely nothing):
http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-dn...
"Underlying paper in Science (paywalled):
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1...
"Brief writeup from Nature discussing this paper and a couple of others on similar topics:
http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-genetic-...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108603
"Everything I've ever seen on HN -- I don't know about Reddit -- from ScienceDaily has been a cut-and-paste copy of something else available from nearer the original source. In some cases ScienceDaily's copy is distinctly worse than the original because it lacks relevant links, enlightening pictures, etc.
" . . . . if you find something there and feel like sharing it, it's pretty much always best to take ten seconds to find the original source and submit that instead of ScienceDaily."
[+] [-] skbohra123|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DiabloD3|10 years ago|reply
I find both extremely important in maintaining my mental state during times of stress. A half hour of meditation a day keeps the mental hospital away.
[+] [-] rikibro|10 years ago|reply
Mindfulness meditation does, and it's an almost exact opposite of a mindlessness state.