The Online Anxiety Therapy That Changes People’s Brains In 9 Weeks

The amygdala is an area of the brain vital to the processing of the emotions.

The amygdala is an area of the brain vital to the processing of the emotions.

After nine weeks of online therapy, people experiencing social anxiety disorder show distinct changes in their brains, new research finds.

Online cognitive behavioural therapy can reduce anxiety and change brain volumes in critical areas.

The study recruited people with social anxiety disorder — one of the most common mental health problems.

Brain scans compared their brains before and after the online treatment.

Activity in the amygdala and anxiety reduced after the online cognitive behavioural therapy in comparison to a control group.

Mr Kristoffer NT Månsson, one of the study’s authors, said:

“The greater the improvement we saw in the patients, the smaller the size of their amygdalae.

The study also suggests that the reduction in volume drives the reduction in brain activity.”

The amygdala is an area of the brain vital to the processing of the emotions.

Mr Månsson said:

“Although we didn’t look at that many patients, this work provides some important knowledge — especially for all the sufferers.

Several studies have reported that certain areas of the brain differ between patients with and without anxiety disorders.

We’ve shown that the patients can improve in nine weeks — and that this leads to structural differences in their brains,”

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry (Boraxbekk et al., 2016).

→ Get Dr Jeremy Dean’s new anxiety ebook, discover the signs of anxiety and learn: what is anxiety?

Network brain image from Shutterstock


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This site is all about scientific research into how the mind works.

It’s mostly written by psychologist and author, Dr Jeremy Dean.

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Author: Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. He is also the author of the book "Making Habits, Breaking Habits" (Da Capo, 2013) and several ebooks.