To be clear, my question was whether therapy changed the brain in similar ways to how antidepressants change the brain, which was the (unjustified) claim made in the article. It just seems like a fantastical claim to me, if for no other reason than that there are different types of antidepressant. So, I might be able to justify saying "Different antidepressants don't even change the brain in similar ways to each other, much less to other, non-antidepressant drugs."
So, therapy changes the brain and antidepressants change the brain. Fine. Are those changes similar? And if so, how are they similar? On 3/7/19 8:41 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > Sorry. See correction, below. The point is, if the therapist convinces the > patient, by rational argument, to do the Right Thing, whatever the right > thing would be, we don’t tend to think of this as a brain change. But of > course it is. So, what is this odd dualism by which some brain changes are > REALLY brain changes, and some are not? Thus, we see again, as we must > always see, (};-)] that brain state materialism is a crock. > > > Of course therapy alters the brain. How on earth else could it work? So, > the question wouldn’t come up if people didn’t suppose that some brain > alterations and */[NST==>are<==nst] /*not REALLY brain alterations. I don’t > know how those people make that distinction. > > *From:*Friam [mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly > *Sent:* Thursday, March 07, 2019 6:20 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] is this true? > > > > Therapy and drugs can certainly change a life. I had a friend who worked for > a research organization at the University of Pittsburgh. He had a Ph.D. in > psychology. At the time I worked in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie > Mellon. He became interested in my work and wondered if there were > opportunities for him there. He investigated and was offered a position. As > a faculty member your job was to find a problem solve it and publish the > results and then seek funding for further work but usually you had the > freedom to pursue whatever problem you wanted to within reason. He was not > used to this lack of structure and he became unhappy. One night he called me > and was in desperate straits. I did what it could to encourage him. He > entered therapy with a psychiatrist. Over the months he became more > productive. After making some contributions in scheduling and planning > software as I recall, he went to work for a startup and did some excellent > work developing visualization > tools. He was head of a group of a dozen or more developers and scientists. > The group became a separate business. After a couple of years it was bought > by a fortune 50 company and he was made head of the division it became. > > I don't know whether or how his brain changes but his life certainly did. > > Frank > > On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 4:58 PM Prof David West <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > ketamine would not be the first drug that was utilized to augment > therapy. MDA, MDMA, even LSD were all studied as ways to enhance, optimize, > therapy. > > An therapy, some kinds of it anyway, have also been demonstrated to > produce very mild altered states of consciousness — somewhat less than > hypnosis, somewhat greater than attending an old fashioned Catholic Mass. > > davew > > On Thu, Mar 7, 2019, at 3:25 PM, glen ∅wrote: > > From > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/opinion/ketamine-depression.html > > > After all, therapy and prescription drugs like antidepressants > change the brain in surprisingly similar ways. > > > > Does therapy exhibit changes in the brain similar to drugs (like > antidepressants or not)? I wish the author had provided a citation or 2. >
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