Psychiatric drugs and psychotherapy mostly have the same purpose: to make us feel better mentally and emotionally. However, it seems like common sense to assume that they do so by very different means, the former acting chemically on your brain and the latter altering your mind and thoughts. Yet if you ponder this some more and consider that our brains are our minds — after all, every lived thought and feeling has its basis in the brain — it follows that if you spend time on the therapist’s proverbial couch, any benefit will ultimately register not only in changes to how you think, but also in changes at a neural level. The fact is, any kind of psychological technique is associated with brain changes — consider how mindfulness meditation has been linked with shrinkage to the amygdala, a neural region involved in processing emotions.
[For more of this story, written by Christian Jarrett, go to http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2...in-differently.html#]
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