title: Long-term effects of cognitive behavior therapy on brain activation in spider phobia.
abstract: This functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated long-term effects of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) in individuals suffering from spider phobia. Ten female patients who had shown positive immediate CBT effects were invited to take part in a 6-month follow-up investigation. Here, the patients, along with eight non-phobic females, were presented with the same pictures depicting spiders, generally disgust-inducing, generally fear-inducing and neutral content, which they had viewed 6 months earlier. Patients' self-report and overt behavior indicated a positive long-term clinical improvement. Related hemodynamic changes included an increase in medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) activity. As the medial OFC is involved in emotion-related learning, especially in the representation of positive stimulus-outcome associations, we conclude that the medial OFC effect constitutes the neuronal basis of the lasting positive CBT outcome. Activity to disorder-irrelevant pictures decreased across the sessions in the lateral OFC and in the insula, which most likely reflects general habituation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria. anne.schienle@uni-graz.at
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schienle
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schäfer
authors.forename: Rudolf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Stark
authors.forename: Dieter
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Vaitl