Introduction to Therapy and Neural Networks

Abstract

Societies and cultures have always believed that they were practicing modern and logically derived therapies to treat disorders of mental health . They all were believed to be efficacious by the societies that practiced them. All of them eventually yielded to newer techniques rooted in newer science or newer beliefs and all of these newer techniques were replaced in turn. It would be the height of hubris to assume that the current treatments for mental health represent the pinnacle of human endeavor in this field. The recent development of new or modified treatments clearly demonstrates that the process of ongoing development is continuing and is robust. While the development of therapeutic paradigms has continued, the understanding of the disorders they are targeted to treat have not. What has been missing is a clinical understanding of how these treatments are impacted by, and impact human neural networks and physiology to produce the effects therapies claim to produce. How do you really go about changing the way a person thinks and feels? What changes or processes have to impact the human connectome , and in what ways, so that these changes can occur? We will look to neuroscience for the answers to these and other questions.