How Psychotherapy Alters the Brain in Anxiety Patients

In a new scientific investigation, researchers took a closer look at how psychotherapy affects the brain of people who suffer from anxiety disorders. The study was conducted because therapy and medication are the two main courses of treatment doctors prescribe to patients suffering from this condition.

These two methods of treatment have become so widespread among psychiatrist, that a very large array of mental disorders are addressed using them. Medication and psychotherapy are oftentimes used together, because experts believe they boost each other's efficiency.

When considering the neurological function of the brain specifically, the effects of medication are a lot better known than those of therapy, and this is why Canadian psychological scientists wanted to even the odds between the two courses of treatment.

Experts with the group selected social anxiety disorder as their target disease. The condition acts by making sufferers overwhelming fearful of interacting with other individuals. Patients are also very afraid of how they could be judged by others.

“We wanted to track the brain changes while people were going through psychotherapy,” explains PhD candidate Vladimir Miskovic, who is based at the McMaster University. He is also the lead author of a new study detailing the findings.

As a starting point, the expert and his team used the established fact that delta-beta coupling (a type of electrical activity in the human brain) is elevated when people experience rising anxiety.

The group therefore used electroencephalograms (EEG) devices to looks at electrical activity patterns in the brains of 25 adults suffering from this condition. Each of the participants then attended 12 weekly sessions of group cognitive behavior therapy.

EEG readings were carried out on each test subject before the sessions began, during, and about two weeks afterwards. At the end of the experiment, delta-beta correlations were similar in patients with anxiety and in two control groups made up of healthy peers.

“We can’t quite claim that psychotherapy is changing the brain. Laypeople tend to think that talk therapy is not ‘real,’ while they associate medications with hard science, and physiologic change,” Miskovic explains, quoted by PsychCentral.

“But at the end of the day, the effectiveness of any program must be mediated by the brain and the nervous system. If the brain does not change, there won’t be a change in behavior or emotion,” he adds.

The work is detailed in the Association of Psychological Science's (APS) journal Psychological Science.