Neurobiological effects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in depression

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a proven effective treatment for depression. Since effective treatment and prevention require knowledge of risk factors and their neurobiological mechanisms, there is a need for more detailed understanding of the neurobiological implications of this disease. While many studies have investigated the neurobiological mechanisms of psychopharmacological treatments in depression, very few of them have investigated the underlying neuronal mechanisms of CBT. Therefore, the proposed applied naturalistic study has been designed to investigate CBT-related longitudinal neurobiological changes in order to identify regional brain morphometric and functional biomarkers associated with therapy response, and finally to predict individual CBT response based on both neurobiological (structural and functional MRI) and clinical data, using multivariate pattern classification techniques.