Depression therapies converge in brain
By Bruce Bower
People diagnosed with major depression display many of the same brain changes when their condition improves whether in response to antidepressant drug treatment or to a type of psychotherapy, two preliminary investigations find.
If confirmed in further work, these results will highlight common brain regions through which various medications and talk therapies fight the melancholy, apathy, and hopeless feelings of major depression.
Both new reports appear in the July Archives of General Psychiatry.
This is pioneering work, says psychiatrist Wayne C. Drevets of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md. There’s been little research on psychotherapy’s effects on the brains of depressed people.