Neuroscience informed Psychotherapy practices have shown to bring about a change in the neural mechanisms of the brain producing long-lasting effects. Several changes in the neural architecture of the brain occur during the process of psychotherapy. Convergence of psychotherapy and neuroscience has gained momentum in the last two decades emerging into a new paradigm.
As psychotherapy tackles the mind and mental processes, it is prudent to believe that psychotherapy can influence neural architecture.
Rebuilding the Brain with Psychotherapy
Neural architecture is shaped and sculpted by encoding of the environmental experiences resulting in the emergence of a unique human being, each different from another in their personality and mental makeup. Working with a therapist who has the potential to understand this will bring more holistic changes to an individual.
Brain functions as we know are lateralized. Left hemisphere is biased toward positive affect, prosocial behavior and generally is more social and less anxious. Right hemisphere on the other hand is biased toward anxiety, fear, and negative emotions. Dysregulation between the two hemispheres leads imbalance in positive and negative affect. Psychotherapy aims to integrate these through healthy emotional expression, interpretation through perspective taking, logical reasoning, reality testing, and putting words to feelings.
Psychotherapies influence on Brain
- An enriching environment forges positive therapeutic alliances between client and therapist
- The dyadic relationship builds on safety and empathy as positive emotions in an otherwise negative affective state
- The brain learns to mediate and modulate stress typically during which state neural circuits block conscious awareness, appraisal of an event and/or its emotional impact
- Positive experiences during psychotherapy play a vital role in gene expression through the neural firing and biochemical changes
- Promotion of neural integration through organizing conscious awareness, behavior, emotions, and sensations where trauma and stress cause disassociations
- Bridging unconscious to conscious awareness whereby implicit memories link with explicit memories, bringing maladaptive learning to the forefront.
- Integration of hemispheric activities to bring balance to positive and negative affect.
- Use of verbal language integrates left hemisphere that communicated through words with right hemisphere which uses facial expressions.
- Activation of fears, phobias, traumas, and release of emotions in an anxiety free controlled environment integrates cortical linguistic processes with unconditional subcortical arousal leading to better inhibition, regulation, and modification of maladaptive reactions
- Revisiting any childhood experiences especially around attachment through adult perspectives to create newer networks and interconnections that serve insights and newer memories, thereby altering emotional reactions
Science and Evidence-based Practices
In the past few decades the Neurosciences have provided invaluable contributions to brain changes involved in psychotherapy practice. Major contributions have been in the understanding of memory of trauma, neurobiological correlates of human attachment, mirror neurons system and theory of mind (ToM). Brain modifications as a resultant of psychotherapeutic treatment have also been extensively studied.
Psychopathology studies pertaining to frontal lobe function have found deficits in both cognitive and emotional functioning. These deficits primarily cause disturbances in attention, planning, rigidity, inertia, criticism, control, inhibition, and decision-making causing executive dysfunction. These areas form the neuronal basis of the Self . In a similar manner deficits in the neural circuits of working memory also impact the processing of the here-and-now. Different conditions have shown deficits as listed below:
- With Anxiety significant deficits in attention control efficiency, especially in inhibition and switching (Shi et al., 2019)
- Patients with Depression complained of attentional lability, concentration difficulties, dysmnesia (e.g., forgetfulness and word-finding difficulty), problem-solving, decision-making, judgment, and mental slowness (Richardson and Adams, 2018)
- In Bipolar disorder, in addition to affective deficits attention, executive functions, learning, memory, and psychomotor speed have been compromised (Cipriani et al., 2017)
- Obsessive–compulsive disorder is connected with significant impairments in visuospatial memory, executive functions, verbal memory, and verbal fluency (Shin et al., 2014).
Key Research Findings
Studies on psychotherapy of traumatic memories have found cortisol (released as a response to stress) rapidly interacts with growth factors produced in the brain. This neurotrophin is essential for long-term synaptic plasticity and interact with explicit (or declarative) memory involved in psychotherapeutic process. When the stress level is relatively moderate, memories are formed and retained, and when the stress becomes too prolonged or intense, it generates a negative effect on memories that can even be lost.
Studies based on the neurobiology of attachment therapy have shown early life experiences with caretakers have a profound impact on a child’s brain development. These repeated early relationship patterns shape undifferentiated neurons into coherent firing networks supporting specific cognitive-affective brain structures (i.e., prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and limbic system). These brain areas are responsible in the processing and expression of emotional information and influence affective states’ modulation, decoding of facial expressions, gestures, and prosody.
Interesting advances in perinatal psychotherapy research have recently highlighted the role of some hormones, such as cortisol and oxytocin, in mediating the relationship between the therapist and a client involved in parental care. The activation of key emotional and thought centres in the brain is particularly sensitive to changes in hormonal levels involved in parental care, including augmentation in oxytocin and vasopressin levels in both parents. Similarly within psychosocial stress contexts cortisol is secreted. Cortisol is the final product of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and is integral to modulating emotional experiences influencing affect. Higher cortisol levels are associated with significant increases in negative affect in patients with major depressive disorder.
“Every cell in your body is eavesdropping on your thoughts.”
― Deepak Chopra, Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine
Quantum Change 