Mindfulness meditation training can reduce the perceived unpleasantness of painful stimuli, which is related to an altered function or structure in somatosensory cortices. The ability of meditation practitioners to focus on the sensory qualities of painful and unpleasant stimuli, rather than the emotional and self-related cognition that might result from unpleasant stimuli, may be an underlying cause of morphometric changes in somatosensory cortices. Alteration of the somatomotor cortical structure by mental training alone is also consistent with research that shows that imagining or dreaming of somatomotor activities results in higher blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal in these regions, although there was not any muscle activity or explicit sensory input. Therefore, these studies suggest that attention is sufficient to significantly modulate activity in these brain areas. As a result, attention may also be enough to significantly modulate brain structure in these regions.