I'm not an expert, but I have these papers on the topic that may help you.

I used them to show my students that the effects of psychotherapy can be studied with experimental approaches...

This is a more theoretical paper, hope they may help

There are a number of meta-analyses and reviews on this topic.

- recent meta-analysis: Barsaglini et al., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24189360

- another review: Frewen et al., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17602811

- one of the first studies in anxiety disorders: Paquette et al., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12595193

- model/review in depression: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18784657

and so on...

Dear colleagues, thank you very much for all your very useful answers, but I would like to know if there is any research on the effect on the brain of what we specifically do in a session of CBT. We usually reason in terms of changing mental mechanism (metacognition, self-acceptance, insight and so on...) and to reach our objectives we use techniques and relationship... I was wondering if there is anybody researching in term of modifying specific brain networks like researchers on drugs do. Moreover which part of our therapy induced that change? How do they interact with patient’s brain? Thank you in advance.

Piergiuseppe

There is a great TED Talk related to this, maybe it helps:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esPRsT-lmw8

I wrote articcle few years ago, maybe it helps.

http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/96933

Thank you very much! I'll read it soon

Piergiuseppe

Natasa, thanks for your paper. Best wishes, John

Till Wykes at the Institute of Psychiatry in London did something on this:

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/181/2/144

While EMDR is not a cognitive behavioral therapy strictly speaking, I have you explored using a sound technique similar to EMDR and have seen incredible changes in brain information processing in patients. It was effective even when I used it on my cat as a trial to help my pet out of intense fear.

Kateri McCrae's recent study, Effects of Antidepressant Medication on Emotion Regulation in Depressed Patients: An iSPOT-D Report and other studies of hers talk about the technique of cognitive reappraisal and its effect on emotional regulation. The studies describe neural correlates etc.

I'm working on an article about emotional regulation for a consumer magazine and I find her work and the research very useful. I'm a psychologist and was a cognitive therapist for years. Cognitive reappraisal is certainly part of CBT although it goes by a variety of names in the therapy literature.

Judith, I think you might find the ideas of Robert Moss PhD (he is on RG) on "emotional restructuring" useful. Please let me know what you think of his "dimensional systems model" and his "clinical biosphycological model". John

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Moss2/

Judith, also have a look at the work of Nathaniel Wade PhD (he is on RG) on "emotion regulation" - particularly "forgiveness" of self and others. Please let me know what you think of his ideas. John

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nathaniel_Wade/

This review paper should be useful too, it presents a cognitive neurophysiological model of the effects of cognitive therapy:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661310001440

Graham, thanks for the link. Would you have a pdf copy for me?

Thanks Julius

Thank you to all of you for your the very useful papers, I have no dubt on the effectiveness of CBT, (I am a CBT therapist) so if we see a change on the patient's face when his mood changes it is very probable that we will see something changed in his brain too if we look at it using fRMI. The problem is to know which part of the CBT induces these changes. In 60 minutes, in a CBT session we can do a lot of things and any CBT therapist does different things. How do these things work? Which is the effect of a laddering or of an ABC on the brain? Thank you again for your answers!

This is a very interesting topic, a very good point , many times the patient has an insight at home, out of the session, what does it happen in that moment? which is the reason of this delay in the effect of the therapy? We put several seed in the minds (and in the brains) of our patients, but we do not know the mechanisms allowing them to grow.

Just a thought - what about "short-term" memory (cognitive memory left hemisphere & emotional memory right hemisphere) being "sorted out" during sleep and then "slotted" into long-term memory (cognitive & emotional) and this "sorted out" cognitive memory gives "new insight" (conditioning/learning)? So, what is the role of memory consolidation?

Thank you, very interesting point, do you have any data on this?

Piergiuseppe, no data at all - only an idea at this stage. I am not aware of any studies - but that does not mean that there are not any. Something else to bear in mind are the licit and illicit substances (both psychoactive and non-psychoactive) that clients take on prescription or over the counter or both. And of course their diet too. All these things will have a bearing on learning (conditioning) and therefore on CBT outcome (positive or negative). But I am intrigued by the possible memory aspect. Hopefully there will be someone out there who can tell me more?

Yes, there's quite a literature on this. One starting point is the Monitor on Psychology, 2004, Vol. 35, April, referring to a study by Helen Mayberg, MD, in the Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 61, No. 1. Using PET scans, the authors found that both SSRIs and CBT changed brain activity but in different ways; CBT affected processing in the medial frontal cortex, for example. David Barlow has reviewed some of this literature in his books, beginning with the early data on the suppression of the lactate induction of panic in those with panic disorder -- both medication and CBT separately abolished the lactate provocation of panic.

Thank you very much!

You may find it interesting to see Amy Cuddy's TED talk that relates to the link between thoughts and behaviour.

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html

Thanks Geoffrey and Paul.