Altered anterior insula activation during anticipation and experience of painful stimuli in expert meditators

► We examined expert and novice meditators's BOLD reponse before, and during, pain. ► Expert meditators reported less unpleasantness than novices. ► This difference was associated with enhanced BOLD activity in the salience network. ► Experts had also less BOLD activity before pain in the salience network. ► Experts had faster habituation of BOLD response to pain in pain-related brain areas.