Focus: In dialogue with neuroscience
30 April 2025
Vol. 36 No. 1 (2025)
https://doi.org/10.4081/rp.2025.854

Psychotherapy and cognitive and neuronal plasticity. The social brain and post-traumatic stress disorder. Notes on The interpreter by M. Gazzaniga

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Psychotherapy, neuronal plasticity, social brain, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychology
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Michele Di Salvo
mik.disalvo@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9531-0591
Director of Neural Nexus, National Artificial Intelligence Institute (ENIA), Milan, Italy.

Starting from a reflection of The interpreter by Gazzaniga, the mechanism of cognitive and neuronal plasticity underlying the effectiveness of rehabilitation therapies of the ‘social brain’ is addressed and described, particularly from a post-traumatic stress disorder point of view. Descriptive research seeks to highlight how drug therapy can be risky in terms of masking and concealing the symptom. This is an open reflection, which, in turn, wants to open some reflections on psychotherapy in light of recent discoveries in the neuroscientific field. The dynamic interaction between the amygdala on the one hand, and the more informed reactions of the prefrontal cortex on the other, offers a neuroanatomical model to explain how psychotherapy reshapes deep-rooted emotional models that are now devoid of adaptive value.

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Michele Di Salvo, Director of Neural Nexus, National Artificial Intelligence Institute (ENIA), Milan

Member of SfN, Society for Neuroscience, Washington, DC, USA; Member of FENS, Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, Brussels, Belgium; Member of NPSA, The International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, London, UK, and Atlanta, USA; Member of CNS, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Center for Mind and Brain, Davis, USA.

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Psychotherapy and cognitive and neuronal plasticity. The social brain and post-traumatic stress disorder. Notes on The interpreter by M. Gazzaniga. (2025). Ricerca Psicoanalitica, 36(1). https://doi.org/10.4081/rp.2025.854
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