OCD psychotherapy causes brain changes

[Celebration]

http://www.medicexchange.com/mall/departmentpage.cfm/MedicExchangeUSA/_81675/3782/departments-contentview

X-ray scans show significant changes in brain activity after four weeks of daily counseling for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), according to California-based researchers.

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"Our findings," lead investigator Dr. Sanjaya Saxena told Reuters Health, "highlight the remarkable and rapid benefits of intensive daily (cognitive behavioral therapy) for OCD, even for patients who had not responded well to standard treatment previously."

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a popular form of counseling in which an OCD patient is taught to recognize and address an erroneous thought rather than attempt to directly change the resulting feelings.

"There is no doubt," he added, "that intensive cognitive behavioral therapy should be the treatment of choice" for patients with OCD that has not responded to standard treatments.

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Patients treated with cognitive behavioral therapy noted marked improvements in their symptoms and the therapy seemed to alter the way chemicals were processed in a number of key brain regions, the report indicates.

[izquierdista]

1. Mind over matter

Next they will be telling us that NLP really DOES work.

[Celebration]

2. yes, it does

And yes, if it is tested like this, it will be next.

[cloudythescribbler]

3. Actually, I am currently in CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) for OCD and this is NOT new

the brain pictures stuff my therapist has been talking about since the start.

[Celebration]

4. this was for the insurors

I think they wanted this particular protocol, which is very intensive (and probably expensive), to be covered by insurance. The results were very fast, so maybe it is worth it.

I hope you get equally fast results!!

[Celebration]

6. also, they claim that this is different

Found this in another article

http://www.anxietyinsights.info/psychotherapy_has_rapid_positive_effect_on_ocd_patients_bra.htm

The PET scans of OCD patients demonstrated significant decreases in glucose metabolism - a measure of brain cell activity - in the right and left thalamus after treatment. These are areas of the brain involved in OCD and where changes have been seen in numerous past studies after longer-term treatment.

However, the PET scans in this study also showed a significant increase in activity in an area of the brain called the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, a region involved in reappraisal and suppression of negative emotions. Increasing activity in this region corresponded to the OCD patients' improvement in clinical symptoms after the four-week course of intensive therapy. Activity in this area had previously been found to increase after cognitive-behavioral therapy for major depression. Therefore, the researchers theorize that response to cognitive-behavioral therapy across a variety of disorders may require activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, according to Saxena.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Interesting...

and yes, there's lots of evidence that the way you think affects your brain, as well as the other way around. London taxi-drivers who have to remember lots of spatial information have bigger hippocampuses (a part of the brain that is very important to memory, especially spatial memory). McClelland and colleagues found that dyslexic adolescents showed less activation of certain left hemisphere brain areas for language tasks than do non-dyslexics; but after an educational intervention that improved their reading, their brain scans became more normal.

I know there are an increasing number of positive results from CBT - let's hope that more people get helped!

[Warpy]

7. It's no secret that experience can have a profound effect

first on brain chemistry and then on structure. It's what creates PTSD, like having a pathway worn over the brain connections, one that's so well worn that sometimes it short circuits and takes over perceptions. It's also involved in much chronic pain. Long after the initial physical injury has healed, those pain pathways stay active.

It's just a crying shame that pain patients can't be talked out of pain.