{"id":179584,"date":"2025-11-14T02:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T02:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/179584\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T02:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T02:57:07","slug":"could-psychotherapy-work-by-changing-how-we-navigate-our-own-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/179584\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Psychotherapy Work by Changing How We Navigate Our Own Minds?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newswise \u2014 The stereotypical image of\u00a0psychotherapy<\/a>\u00a0shows a patient lying on a couch, exploring their deepest traumas. This leads to awareness of unconscious habits, thoughts, and drives and has long been a cornerstone of psychotherapy. However, the\u00a0cognitive processes<\/a>\u00a0underlying the new awareness that emerges\u2014what\u2019s actually happening in the patient\u2019s brain on that couch\u2014remain a mystery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the problem with psychotherapy is that we haven\u2019t had good insights into the mechanistic problems,\u201d said Jaan Aru, an associate professor at the University of Tartu, in an interview with the\u00a0Observer. \u201cSo, it\u2019s very hard to design a therapy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a\u00a02025 paper in\u00a0Perspectives on Psychological Science<\/a>, Aru and Nick Kabrel, Aru\u2019s graduate student at the University of Zurich, wrote that becoming aware of unrecognized psychological and behavioral challenges is the most crucial mechanism in conversation-based psychotherapy. Furthermore, they argue that becoming aware can be best framed as a process that expands one\u2019s cognitive map and changes the way one navigates through the mind. This framework also provides a testable theory about the neural correlates behind successful psychotherapy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kabrel came to this theory through personal experience. He noticed how a therapist\u2019s questions could prompt him to search through his\u00a0memories<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0beliefs<\/a>, and the introspection was surprisingly powerful. He wondered what was happening in his\u00a0brain<\/a>\u00a0in those moments and noticed something that sparked his interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I search through memory or search in my mind, it always feels as if I am navigating in some kind of environment,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As he looked into this idea of mental navigation, he realized he was not alone. In a 2024 paper, he and Aru showed that patients and therapists used more spatial language\u2014such as \u201cthis is unexplored territory\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m going in circles\u201d\u2014during psychotherapy sessions than during everyday conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the new paper, Aru and Kabrel proposed a framework based on how individuals construct their internal worlds in the form of cognitive maps: structured representations of phenomena like objects, concepts, people, and memories, and the relationships among them. Research revealing how the brain represents three-dimensional space helped inspire how this navigation may occur in the brain (O\u2019Keefe and Dostrovsky, 1971; Hafting, 2005). In the hippocampus, place cells fire when animals are in a specific location, while the entorhinal cortex\u2019s grid cells act like a coordinate map. More recent research revealed these cells also encode abstract concepts, such as time, sound, social hierarchies, and word meanings (MacDonald, 2011; Aronov, 2017; Park, 2021; Solomon, 2019; Vigan\u00f2, 2021).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe brain is highly likely to make use of this mapping system in these other domains, too,\u201d Aru said. \u201cThis idea of mental navigation could be a very general framework to understand thinking and abstract cognition.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Framing introspection in this way may help people realize that changing the way they navigate through their thoughts could help them out of a pathological way of thinking.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, someone suffering from\u00a0depression<\/a>\u00a0might think they are flawed, and any interaction with someone else that ends negatively will be interpreted as their fault because of these perceived flaws. As they continue to view the world through this same negative lens, this thought pattern gets reinforced. It\u2019s analogous to hiking through a forest: The more a path is used, the wider it gets and the more likely it is to be used again.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But a therapist helping them see a different interpretation\u2014a different navigational route\u2014may allow them to reframe their thoughts and not see everything as their fault. Kabrel recommends a psychotherapist say something like, \u201cThis is the place where we are stuck. We come back here every time, but we need to expand this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aru thinks this idea is not just for people with mental illness, but for everyone.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOften the problem is that people have very narrow maps, very narrow ways of thinking. And it\u2019s a very general problem,\u201d he said. \u201cOur goal as a society could be to expand the way people actually think.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

On a smaller scale, the goal of the paper is to encourage psychological scientists and neuroscientists to design experiments to test this new framework and the possible neural correlates involved. In the meantime, Aru knows that some scientists may be doubtful.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s completely understandable if there are scientists who would say, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re stretching it too far. How do you know that it\u2019s really related to grid cells?\u2019\u201d he explained. \u201cFor me, this is the fun thing about science. You can try to make these links, and sometimes these links are actually there. Then suddenly we might be understanding something that we previously didn\u2019t, and we might be expanding our own mental maps with that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aronov D., Nevers R., Tank D.W. (2017).\u00a0Mapping of a non-spatial dimension by the hippocampal-entorhinal circuit<\/a>.\u00a0Nature, 543(7647):719-722.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hafting T., Fyhn M., Molden S., Moser M.B., & Moser E.I. (2005).\u00a0Microstructure of spatial map in the entorhinal cortex<\/a>.\u00a0Nature, 436, 801-806.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kabrel N., & Aru J. (2025).\u00a0Becoming aware through internal exploration: Understanding psychotherapy on conceptual and neurobiological levels<\/a>.\u202fPerspectives on Psychological Science,\u00a00(0).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kabrel M., Tulver K., & Aru J. (2024).\u00a0The journey within: Mental navigation as a novel framework for understanding psychotherapeutic transformation<\/a>.\u202fBMC Psychiatry,\u202f24, Article 91.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MacDonald C.J., Lepage K.Q., Eden U.T., Eichenbaum H. (2011)\u00a0Hippocampal \u201ctime cells\u201d bridge the gap in memory for discontiguous events.<\/a>\u00a0Neuron, 71(4):737\u201349.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

O\u2019Keefe J., & Dostrovsky J. (1971).\u00a0The hippocampus as a spatial map. Preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat.<\/a>\u00a0Brain Research, 34(1): 171-5.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Park S. A., Miller D. S., & Boorman E. D. (2021).\u00a0Inferences on a multidimensional social hierarchy use a grid-like code.<\/a>\u00a0Nature Neuroscience, 24(9), 1292-1301.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Solomon E. A., Lega B. C., Sperling M. R., & Kahana M. J. (2019).\u00a0Hippocampal theta codes for distances in semantic and temporal spaces<\/a>.\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(48), 24343-24352.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vigan\u00f2 S., Rubino V., Di Soccio A., Buiatti M., & Piazza M. (2021).\u00a0Grid-like and\u00a0<\/a>distance codes for representing word meaning in the human brain.<\/a>\u00a0NeuroImage,\u00a0232,\u00a0117876.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newswise \u2014 The stereotypical image of\u00a0psychotherapy\u00a0shows a patient lying on a couch, exploring their deepest traumas. This leads…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[7260,18616,18,11293,19,17,47285,941,9363,101531,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-179584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-all-journal-news","9":"tag-association-for-psychological-science","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ethics-and-research-methods","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-neuro","15":"tag-newswise","16":"tag-psychology-and-psychiatry","17":"tag-psychotherapycognitive-map","18":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115545810056173608","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}