ArticlePloS one2012
Changes in prefrontal-limbic function in major depression after 15 months of long-term psychotherapy.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 63 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
63 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 220 citations in OpenAlex.
- Subgenual anterior cingulate cortex in major depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis of MRI studies with patients and healthy controls.Translational psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- The convergent neuroscience of Christian prayer and attachment relationships in the context of mental health: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Neural, Anti-Inflammatory, and Clinical Effects of Transauricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation in Major Depressive Disorder: A Systematic Review.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Pooled it
- Neural correlates of psychodynamic and non-psychodynamic therapies in different clinical populations through fMRI: A meta-analysis and systematic review.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Changes in causal attributions and relationship representations: Are they specific or common mechanisms in the treatment of depression?Journal of affective disorders · 2016Trial
- Frontolimbic neural circuit changes in emotional processing and inhibitory control associated with clinical improvement following transference-focused psychotherapy in borderline personality disorder.Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences · 2016Trial
- Predictors of response in the treatment of moderate depression.Revista brasileira de psiquiatria (Sao Paulo, Brazil : 1999)Trial
- Diagnostics and Group Therapy in Patients with Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness and Anxiety Disorder: Biomarkers and Neurofunctional Correlates of Underlying Treatment Effects.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Psychological capital and death anxiety in pancreatic cancer patients: a latent profile analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy in depression - complementarity or exclusion?Postepy psychiatrii neurologii · 2024Article
- Boosting Psychotherapy With Noninvasive Brain Stimulation: The Whys and Wherefores of Modulating Neural Plasticity to Promote Therapeutic Change.Neural plasticity · 2024Review
- Article
- Role of Cognitive Control in Psychotherapy: An Integrated Review.Indian journal of psychological medicine · 2023Article
- The Interplay of Oxytocin and Attachment in Schizophrenic Patients: An fMRI Study.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Article
- Disrupted topological organization of functional brain networks in Alzheimer's disease patients with depressive symptoms.BMC psychiatry · 2022Article
- The Association of White Matter Tracts with Alexithymia among Individuals with Major Depressive Disorder.Experimental neurobiology · 2022Article
- A Short Functional Neuroimaging Assay Using Attachment Scenes to Recruit Neural Correlates of Social Cognition-A Replication Study.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Neural Correlates of Attachment Representation in Patients With Borderline Personality Disorder Using a Personalized Functional Magnet Resonance Imaging Task.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 9 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Neuroimaging studies of depression have demonstrated treatment-specific changes involving the limbic system and regulatory regions in the prefrontal cortex. While these studies have examined the effect of short-term, interpersonal or cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy, the effect of long-term, psychodynamic intervention has never been assessed. Here, we investigated recurrently depressed (DSM-IV) unmedicated outpatients (N = 16) and control participants matched for sex, age, and education (N = 17) before and after 15 months of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Participants were scanned at two time points, during which presentations of attachment-related scenes with neutral descriptions alternated with descriptions containing personal core sentences previously extracted from an attachment interview. Outcome measure was the interaction of the signal difference between personal and neutral presentations with group and time, and its association with symptom improvement during therapy. Signal associated with processing personalized attachment material varied in patients from baseline to endpoint, but not in healthy controls. Patients showed a higher activation in the left anterior hippocampus/amygdala, subgenual cingulate, and medial prefrontal cortex before treatment and a reduction in these areas after 15 months. This reduction was associated with improvement in depressiveness specifically, and in the medial prefrontal cortex with symptom improvement more generally. This is the first study documenting neurobiological changes in circuits implicated in emotional reactivity and control after long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.