1. Psychotherapy: The Biological Dimension
Grigoris K. Lavrentiadis
Assistant Prof. of Psychiatry
B’ Department of Psychiatry
Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki
Greece

2. The great mistake in an over-ambitious science has been the desire to study man altogether as a mere sum of parts, if possible of atoms, or now of electrons and as a machine, detached by itself, because at least some points in the simple sciences could be studied to the best advantage with this method of so called elementalist. It was a long time before willingness to see the large group of facts, in their broad relations as well as in their inner structure, finally gave us the concept and vision of integration which now fits man as alive unit and transformer of energy into the world of facts and makes him frankly a conscious integrated psychobiological individual and member of a social group
Adolph Meyer, 1921

3. Concordance Rates in Twins
Type of illness Identical T. Nonidentical T.
Autism % %
Schizophrenia % %
Bipolar disorder % %
Coronary artery disease % %
Depression % %
Breast cancer % %
N.Andreasen: Brave New Brain,2001

4. Techniques that used for the neuropsychological model
Lesion method
Tract tracing
Neuroimaging
Animal modeling
Single-cell recording
Electophysiology
Neurophysiology
Experimental Cognitive Psychology

5. Taxonomy of Memory
A. Declarative (Explicit) memory: Capacity for conscious recollection about facts and events. Later in life. Expressed in words and drawings. (hippocampus, medial temporal lobe, orbitofrontal cortex and midline diencephalons)
1. Semantic memory: facts about the
word.
2. Episodic memory: the capacity to re-
experience an event in the context in
which it originally occurred (frontal lobes)
B. Nondeclarative (Implicit ) memory: Dispositional memory that is expressed through performance rather than recollection. No conscious awareness, presented from birth. Schema of mental models that are summation of experiences. (basal ganglia, limbic system, and perceptual cortices)

6. Nervous that fire together, wire together
Donald Hebb, 1949

7. Regional abnormalities in depression
More common
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex
Dorsomedial frontal cortex
Ventromedial frontal cortex
Dorsal cingulate
Rostral cingulate
Subgenual cingulate
Less common
Hippocampus
Amygdala
Posterior cingulate
Striatum
Thalamus

8. Fear-mediating neuronal systems (LeDoux, 1996)
A. The Amygdala system
Quick and general alarm system.
Reaction to a wide variety of fear-related
stimuli.
B. The Hippocampal system
Reaction to more specific fear-
provoking cues and may give rise to
explicit memories.

9. Learning that occurs in psychotherapy may influence the structure and the function of the brain . Early attachment relationships are internalized an encoded as procedural memory
Eric Kandel, 1998

10. When a therapist speaks to a patient and the patient listens, the therapist is not only making eye contact and voice contact, but the action of neuronal machinery in the therapist brain is having an indirect and, one hopes, long lasting effect on the neuronal machinery in the patient’s brain. Our words produce changes in our patient’s mind
Eric Kandel, 1998

11. How Psychotherapy stimulates the Brain
1. Psychotherapy affects cerebral metabolic rates.
2. Psychotherapy affects serotonin metabolism.
3. Psychotherapy affects the thyroid axis.
4. Psychotherapy stimulates processes akin to brain plasticity.
5. Psychotherapy normalizes pathognomonic biological features.

12. Changes in depression with treatment
Cognitive Behavior Therapy:
frontal cortex decrease
hippocampal increase
medial frontal cortex changes
orbital frontal cortex changes
Pharmacotherapy:
frontal cortex increase
hippocampal decrease
brainstem changes
thalamic changes
Electro Convulsive Therapy:

13. Parallels between brain physiology and schools of Psychotherapy
A. Behavior Psychotherapy
Dysfunction in simple forms of learning
and memory (operant and associative
conditioning) and related motor behavior.
Brain structures in amygdala, basal ganglia,
hippocampus
B. Cognitive Psychotherapy
Dysfunction in define specific verbal thoughts and
assumptions or schemata (automatic negative
thoughts)
Brain structures in neocortex, specifically the
frontal cortex

14. Parallels between brain physiology and schools of Psychotherapy
C. Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Dysfunction in interpersonal
representations and especially the
expectations about self, others and their
relationship that organizes affect,
thought and behavior.
Brain structures are complex neurocircuitry
incorporating lateralized cerebral
hemispheres and subcortical areas.

15. Unlike neurological diseases, psychiatric disorders cannot be related to discrete localized brain dysfunctions, but rather to malfunctioning interconnections between neuronal modules and their interaction with the environment
Parnas and Bovet

16. The theory of man as person loses its way if it falls into an account of man as machine or as an organism of it-processes
Ronald Laing

17. A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents … but rather because its opponents eventually die
Max Planck