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Updated: Sep 2, 2025
Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance
Published on: July 19, 2017
Neural predictors of cognitive-behavior therapy outcome in anxiety-related disorders: a meta-analysis of task-based
Maria Picó-Pérez1,2,3, Miquel A Fullana4,5, Anton Albajes-Eizagirre5,6
1Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), University of Minho, Braga, Portugal.
Background:
Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) is a well-established first-line intervention for anxiety-related disorders, including specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder/agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Several neural predictors of CBT outcome for anxiety-related disorders have been proposed, but previous results are inconsistent.
Methods:
We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies investigating whole-brain predictors of CBT outcome in anxiety-related disorders (17 studies, n = 442).
Results:
Across different tasks, we observed that brain response in a network of regions involved in salience and interoception processing, encompassing fronto-insular (the right inferior frontal gyrus-anterior insular cortex) and fronto-limbic (the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex-dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) cortices was strongly associated with a positive CBT outcome.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that there are robust neural predictors of CBT outcome in anxiety-related disorders that may eventually lead (probably in combination with other data) to develop personalized approaches for the treatment of these mental disorders.
