Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives

by Daniel J. Levitin

Psychotherapy can change the structure of the brain. This isn’t at all surprising, given what we’ve seen throughout this book—that every experience changes the brain. In particular, cognitive behavioral therapy engages similar neural mechanisms as antidepressant medications, but without the side effects of withdrawal. Long dismissed by physicians who were more focused on pharmaceutical, electroshock, or other “medical” interventions, talk therapy has proven its effectiveness, and even its superiority. For depression, it is at least as effective as antidepressant drugs in the short term, and over the long term, we see less relapse—two years after intervention, people who received prior cognitive therapy are doing better than people who simply stayed on medication.