SynthesisEuropean journal of psychotraumatology2021
Does trauma-focused psychotherapy change the brain? A systematic review of neural correlates of therapeutic gains in PTSD.
Synthesis in European journal of psychotraumatology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT06429293 (Impact of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Neural, Inflammatory, & Autonomic Markers in a Sample With PTSD and Cardiovascular Risk), which is not on this map. Cited by 28 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Impact of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Neural, Inflammatory, & Autonomic Markers in a Sample With PTSD and Cardiovascular Risk: Protocol for a Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 45 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of psychotherapy on brain activation during negative emotional processing in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Brain imaging and behavior · 2024Pooled it
- Functional brain changes after alternative pharmacological interventions in posttraumatic stress disorder: A systematic review of clinical trials.Brain and behavior · 2023Pooled it
- Hippocampal connectivity changes after traumatic memory reactivation with propranolol for posttraumatic stress disorder: a randomized fMRI study.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Trial
- Changes in neural responses during affective and non-affective tasks and improvement of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms following trauma-focused psychotherapy.Translational psychiatry · 2023Trial
- Biological mechanisms underlying adverse mental health outcome after trauma.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- Burnout and the Brain-A Mechanistic Review of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Studies.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Article
- Accelerated development of cardiovascular risk factors mediates risk for major adverse cardiovascular events in posttraumatic stress disorder.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2025Article
- Neural correlates and plasticity of explicit emotion regulation following the experience of trauma.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Review
- Article
- Neuroscience-based relational art therapy and deep brain reorienting in the treatment of dissociative identity disorder.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Posttraumatic stress disorder increases thrombosis risk: Evidence from a biobank data set.American journal of hematology · 2024Article
- Neuroimaging of posttraumatic stress disorder in adults and youth: progress over the last decade on three leading questions of the field.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Review
- Probing the neurocardiac circuit in trauma and posttraumatic stress.Journal of psychiatric research · 2024Article
- Cortico-limbic interactions and carotid atherosclerotic burden during chronic stress exposure.European heart journal · 2024Article
- Structural Neuroimaging of Hippocampus and Amygdala Subregions in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Scoping Review.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2024Article
- Boosting Psychotherapy With Noninvasive Brain Stimulation: The Whys and Wherefores of Modulating Neural Plasticity to Promote Therapeutic Change.Neural plasticity · 2024Review
- The Stress Phenotyping Framework: A multidisciplinary biobehavioral approach for assessing and therapeutically targeting maladaptive stress physiology.Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2024Review
- Impact of cognitive behavioural therapy on neural, inflammatory, & autonomic markers in a sample with PTSD and cardiovascular risk: protocol for a pilot randomised controlled trial.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2024Article
- Underlying Hippocampal Mechanism of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Treatment Outcome: Evidence From Two Clinical Trials.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Meta-analytic results indicate that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with hypoactivation of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), hyperactivation of the amygdala, and volume reductions of the hippocampus. Effective psychotherapeutic treatments were hypothesized to normalize these neural patterns via upregulation of prefrontal structures, which in turn downregulate limbic regions. Objective: To gain a sound understanding of the effects of successful psychotherapy on the brain, neural changes from pre- to post-treatment in PTSD patients will be aggregated. Method: A systematic literature search identified 24 original studies employing structural or functional MRI measurements both before and after treatment of patients diagnosed with PTSD. Results: In conjunction, the review returned little evidence of an activation increase in the mPFC/rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) following successful treatment. Five out of 12 studies observed such an increase (especially during emotion processing tasks), albeit in partially non-overlapping brain regions. Conversely, neither the putative related activation decrease in the amygdala nor volumetric changes or altered activation during the resting state could be convincingly established. Conclusion: Successful psychological treatments might potentially work via upregulation of the mPFC, which thus may be involved in symptom reduction. However, the role of the amygdala in recovery from PTSD remains unclear. There is currently no indication that the various PTSD treatment approaches employed by the reviewed studies differ regarding their action mechanisms, but further research on this topic is needed.
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Registered trials
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.