The Characteristic And Neural Basis Of Insight In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Insight is a salient psychotherapeutic progress but has rarely been measured in a controlled experimental setting. This study aimed to isolate and measure insight in the context of cognitive behavioral therapy and then to investigate the neural basis of it.The guessing riddle paradigm of cognitive psychology was used as a basis to experimentally generate insights. In guessing riddle, participant first read a riddle,then the solution was presented. The insight process was produced at the very time the participant understood the solution. Specifically, virtual micro-dialogues applying cognitive restructuring techniques were presented. The participant first read a description of a psychologically distressing situation(“problem”) and then an insightful explanation(“solution”), such that at that moment an insight process would be triggered. For each item, zero-, low-, and high-insight solutions were matched to the problem. In the preliminary Experiment 1, 114 university students rated the agreement with 110 items to determine their suitability for the inclusion in the study,with 75 items retained. In Experiment 2, experts and university students evaluated the adaptability and emotional valence of problems, and the insightfulness, novelty,adaptability, and emotional valence of solutions. It was found that novelty significantly discriminated the high-insight solutions from the other two solution types for experts and significantly discriminated all three solution types for students,while adaptability and emotional valence could discriminate the high- and low-insight solutions types from the zero-insight solution for both experts and students, but the two dimensions did not allow such clear discrimination like novelty between the highand low-insight solutions types. The results indicated that novelty has a stronger connection with insightfulness than adaptability and emotional valence. In Experiment 3, f MRI scan were performed on 22 university students. The results founded that a wide cortex was involved in high-insight solutions, such as left superior temporal gyrus, left fusiform gyrus, left and right amygdale, and right hippocampus. In conclusion, the clinical-like insight process could be triggered by these multiple virtual micro-dialogues, and we attempted to discuss the neural mechanism based on the novelty and adaptability.