Modulación de la actividad de la corteza prefrontal como mecanismo putativo del cambio en psicoterapia

Abstract

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) it is defined as the cortical cerebral region reciprocally connected with dorsolateral nucleus of thalamus. Traditional accounts derived from behavioral sciences had ascribed to the PFC a key role in temporal organization of behavior. Additionally, convergent studies from affective neuroscience field have shown the key role that PFC plays over affective style and, especially, emotion regulation. Affective style entail individual differences in several parameters associated to affective reactivity and dispositional mood (e.g. emotional response amplitude, time to recover from emotional reactions etc.). Given that practically all psychopathological disorders included an affective alteration connected to those parameters, we propose PFC activation modulation as a fundamental variable related to psychotherapy associated behavioral changes. Based on PFC cascade cognitive control our putative model it is presented. Specifically, we suggest that emotion regulation occurs associated to a rostral-caudal PFC activation, where rostral regions involve complex ways of affective control.

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) it is defined as the cortical cerebral region reciprocally connected with dorsolateral nucleus of thalamus. Traditional accounts derived from behavioral sciences had ascribed to the PFC a key role in temporal organization of behavior. Additionally, convergent studies from affective neuroscience field have shown the key role that PFC plays over affective style and, especially, emotion regulation. Affective style entail individual differences in several parameters associated to affective reactivity and dispositional mood (e.g. emotional response amplitude, time to recover from emotional reactions etc.). Given that practically all psychopathological disorders included an affective alteration connected to those parameters, we propose PFC activation modulation as a fundamental variable related to psychotherapy associated behavioral changes. Based on PFC cascade cognitive control our putative model it is presented. Specifically, we suggest that emotion regulation occurs associated to a rostral-caudal PFC activation, where rostral regions involve complex ways of affective control.