Academic Title
Affiliation
Major Area(s) of Study
Associate Professor of Anesthesiology; Director of UCSD Center for Mindfulness UCSD Behavioral Medicine
     
E-mail
Phone
Address
fzeidan@ucsd.edu 858-246-8246 9500 Gilman Drive | MC0719 / La Jolla, CA

 

Website

www.zeidanlab.com

Graduate Institution

UNC Charlotte

Research Description

The subjective experience of pain is multidimensional and is modulated and constructed by a constellation of interactions between sensory, cognitive, and affective factors, rendering the treatment of clinical pain challenging and often a financial burden. The central objective of our research is to identify the specific mechanisms supporting the cognitive regulation of pain and health. We also are primarily focused on assessing the processes supporting cost-effective, non-pharmacological approaches to pain relief such as mindfulness meditation. We combine validated psychophysical, psychological, pharmacologic, and neuroimaging methodologies to best determine how cognitive techniques such as placebo, mindfulness meditation, expectations, beliefs, and other cognitive manipulations impact experimentally-induced and clinical pain.

Representative Publications

  • Zeidan, F., Adler-Neal, A., Wells, R.W., Stagnate, E., May, L., Eisenach, J.C., McHaffie, J.G., & Coghill, R.C. (2016). Mindfulness-meditation-based pain relief is not mediated by endogenous opioids. The Journal of Neuroscience, 36(11): 3391–3397.

  • Zeidan, F., Emerson, N.M., Farris, S.R., Ray, J. N., Jung, Y., McHaffie, J. G., & Coghill, R. C. (2015). Mindfulness meditation-based pain relief employs different neural mechanisms than placebo and sham mindfulness meditation-induced analgesia. The Journal of Neuroscience, 35(46): 15307–15325.

  • Zeidan, F., Martucci, K. T., Kraft, R. A., Gordon, N. S., McHaffie, J. G., & Coghill, R. C. (2011). Brain mechanisms supporting the modulation of pain by mindfulness meditation. The Journal of Neuroscience : The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 31(14), 5540-5548.

Collaborators

Bill Mobley: UCSD Institute for Empathy and Compassion / Tom Liu: Director of UCSD Center for Functional MRI