Background: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for panic disorder with agoraphobia (PD/AG). It is unknown, how variants of CBT differentially modulate brain networks involved in PD/AG. This study was aimed to evaluate the effects of therapist-guided (T+) versus selfguided (T–) exposure on the neural correlates of fear conditioning in PD/AG. Method: In a randomized, controlled multicenter clinical trial in medication-free patients with PD/AG who were treated with 12 sessions of manualized CBT, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used during fear conditioning before (t1) and after CBT (t2). Quality-controlled fMRI data from 42 patients and 42 healthy subjects (HS) were obtained. Patients were randomized to two variants of CBT (T+, n = 22, and T–, n = 20). Results: The interaction of diagnosis (PD/AG, HS), treatment group (T+, T–), time point (t1, t2) and stimulus type (conditioned stimulus: yes, no) revealed activation in the left hippocampus and the occipitotemporal cortex. The T+ group demonstrated increased activation of the hippocampus at t2 (t2 > t1), which was positively correlated with treatment outcome, and a decreased connectivity between the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left hippocampus across time (t1 > t2). Conclusion: After T+ exposure, contingency-encoding processes related to the posterior hippocampus are augmented and more decoupled from processes of the left inferior frontal gyrus, previously shown to be dysfunctionally activated in PD/AG. Linking single procedural variants to neural substrates offers the potential to inform about the optimization of targeted psychotherapeutic interventions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:71639 |
| Date | 05 August 2020 |
| Creators | Straube, Benjamin, Lueken, Ulrike, Jansen, Andreas, Konrad, Carsten, Gloster, Andrew T., Gerlach, Alexander L., Ströhle, Andreas, Wittmann, André, Pfleiderer, Bettina, Gauggel, Siegfried, Wittchen, Ulrich, Arolt, Volker, Kircher, Tilo |
| Publisher | Karger |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 1423-0348, 10.1159/000359955, info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung/BMBF-Psychotherapie-Forschung/01GV0615/ |
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