Ricerc@Sapienza

Background Previous functional MRI studies have revealed that ongoing clinical pain in different chronic pain syndromes is directly correlated to the connectivity strength of the resting default mode network (DMN) with the insula. Here, we investigated seed-based resting state DMN-insula connectivity during acute migraine headaches. Methods Thirteen migraine without aura patients (MI) underwent 3 T MRI scans during the initial six hours of a spontaneous migraine attack, and were compared to a group of 19 healthy volunteers (HV).

A number of studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience have shown the effects of mindfulness and meditation training in enhancing cognitive functions assessed by a broad range of tasks implicating measures of response accuracy, response time, and associated electrophysiological and neuroimaging patterns. We will offer a theoretical framework based on cognitive and consciousness neurosciences to account for the broad range of effects of mindfulness meditation training on multiple cognitive functions.