http://www.nitrc.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=4937 <table border="0" width="100%"><tr><td align="left"/></tr></table> <p><b>Predicting long-term outcome of Internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder using fMRI and support vector machine learning.</b></p> <p>Transl Psychiatry. 2015;5:e530</p> <p>Authors: Månsson KN, Frick A, Boraxbekk CJ, Marquand AF, Williams SC, Carlbring P, Andersson G, Furmark T</p> <p>Abstract<br/> Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for social anxiety disorder (SAD), but many patients do not respond sufficiently and a substantial proportion relapse after treatment has ended. Predicting an individual's long-term clinical response therefore remains an important challenge. This study aimed at assessing neural predictors of long-term treatment outcome in participants with SAD 1 year after completion of Internet-delivered CBT (iCBT). Twenty-six participants diagnosed with SAD underwent iCBT including attention bias modification for a total of 13 weeks. Support vector machines (SVMs), a supervised pattern recognition method allowing predictions at the individual level, were trained to separate long-term treatment responders from nonresponders based on blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses to self-referential criticism. The Clinical Global Impression-Improvement scale was the main instrument to determine treatment response at the 1-year follow-up. Results showed that the proportion of long-term responders was 52% (12/23). From multivariate BOLD responses in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) together with the amygdala, we were able to predict long-term response rate of iCBT with an accuracy of 92% (confidence interval 95% 73.2-97.6). This activation pattern was, however, not predictive of improvement in the continuous Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale-Self-report version. Follow-up psychophysiological interaction analyses revealed that lower dACC-amygdala coupling was associated with better long-term treatment response. Thus, BOLD response patterns in the fear-expressing dACC-amygdala regions were highly predictive of long-term treatment outcome of iCBT, and the initial coupling between these regions differentiated long-term responders from nonresponders. The SVM-neuroimaging approach could be of particular clinical value as it allows for accurate prediction of treatment outcome at the level of the individual.<br/> </p><p>PMID: 25781229 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]</p> en-us Copyright 2000-2026 NITRC OSI Fri, 01 May 2026 21:44:43 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss NITRC RSS generator