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We do not know of mental states in the absence of brain activity and therefore assume that all mental states have correlates in the brain. If we consider brain states as part of the physical world, no two states of a brain will be exactly the same. The brain would thus appear to be a permanently changing organ, always prepared to implement new mental states. Within such a framework of thought, it would make perfect sense for any change in our attitudes, beliefs, cognitive styles, preferences, and modes of interaction to be accompanied by changes in the brain.
The search for brain correlates of changes of mental states and psychological interventions has fascinated researchers since the beginning of modern neurosci-ence. Cajal, the founder of the microscopic study of the nervous system, and several of his contemporaries proposed morphological changes of dendritic spines as structural correlates of learning and changing mental states (DeFelipe, 2006). The recent interest in alterations of spine morphology and number as a substrate of neural plasticity, which may lead to the formation of new neuronal circuits (Alvarez & Sabatini, 2007), follows in the footsteps of these late-nineteenth-century neuroanatomists. With this long tradition of research into the brain mechanisms subserving changes in mental states, it seems remarkable at first that it has taken almost 100 years, since Cajal was awarded his Nobel prize in 1906, for brain correlates of psychotherapy to become a topic of systematic investigation.
Admittedly, the functional neuroimaging techniques that allow us to follow the changing pattern of brain metabolism or activation over the course of a psychological intervention have only become available over the past two decades. However, the reasons for the slow uptake of neurobiological approaches by the psychotherapy community (and for the slow pace at which interest in psychological interventions has developed in the neuroscience