{"id":221049,"date":"2025-08-27T01:20:54","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T06:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-can-alter-brain-structure-and-boost-gray-matter-volume-study-shows"},"modified":"2025-08-27T01:20:54","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T06:20:54","slug":"cognitive-behavioral-therapy-can-alter-brain-structure-and-boost-gray-matter-volume-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-can-alter-brain-structure-and-boost-gray-matter-volume-study-shows","title":{"rendered":"Cognitive behavioral therapy can alter brain structure and boost gray matter volume, study shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-can-alter-brain-structure-and-boost-gray-matter-volume-study-shows.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Psychotherapy leads to measurable changes in brain structure. Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of M\u00fcnster have demonstrated this for the first time in a study in <i>Translational Psychiatry<\/i> by using cognitive behavioral therapy.<\/p>\n<p>The team analyzed the brains of 30 patients suffering from acute depression. After therapy, most of them showed changes in areas responsible for processing emotions. The observed effects are similar to those already known from studies on medication.<\/p>\n<p>Around 280 million people suffer from <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/severe+depression\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">severe depression<\/a> worldwide. This depression leads to changes in the brain mass of the anterior hippocampus and amygdala. Both areas are part of the limbic system and are primarily responsible for processing and controlling emotions. In <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/psychotherapy\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">psychotherapy<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/cognitive+behavioral+therapy\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cognitive behavioral therapy<\/a> (CBT) is an established method for treating depression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Psychotherapy leads to measurable changes in brain structure. Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of M\u00fcnster have demonstrated this for the first time in a study in Translational Psychiatry by using cognitive behavioral therapy. The team analyzed the brains of 30 patients suffering from acute depression. After therapy, most of them [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}