[FRIAM] is this true?

[glen ∅]

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:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Thursday, March 07, 2019 6:20 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
> *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 <profwest at fastmail.fm <mailto:profwest at fastmail.fm>> 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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