Worried? Talk It Out

July 10, 2007 — -- Scientists are developing new evidence that helps explain why just writing about fear and depression, or talking with a friend, can help make the pain go away.

It turns out that verbalizing our worries or fears has a measurable impact on various parts of the brain. So does simply sitting on the floor and meditating about such mundane things as breathing.

Ever since Sigmund Freud postulated that talking about our problems was good therapy, experts have argued over whether he was right. Psychoanalysis has a checkered past, and while many believe it works, not everyone agrees. Now, there's new evidence that at least something is going on in the human brain when fears are put into words, or when meditation creates a state of mind that is free from distraction.

"Lots of people have known that therapy works, or writing in a journal helps, but lots of other people don't believe that," said psychologist Matthew D. Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles. "Now we're beginning to understand the mechanism for how that works, and that may allow someone who is more skeptical to make sense of it."

It may also lead to better ways to treat patients who are emotionally disturbed, he added.

Lieberman and scientists at a number of institutions are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of people as they verbalize fear, or as they meditate. The effect is surprisingly similar.

Thirty people participated in Lieberman's study, which is published in the current issue of Psychological Science. They were shown a series of photographs, such as angry faces or passive faces, and the angry faces produced a response in the part of the brain called the amygdala, which is sort of the brain's alarm system. But that response changed when the participants described the photographs.

"When you attach the word 'angry,' you see a decreased response in the amygdala," Lieberman said. But simultaneously there is an increase in activity in another part of the brain, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is believed to inhibit emotional response.