Do psychotherapy and (computational) neuroscience need each other? An invitation to therapists

The ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’, for a psychotherapy firmly grounded on neuroscience, and nowadays computational neuroscience, has always appeared desirable, but rather out of reach. Such neuroscience may, and should, be put in the service of psychotherapy, and has the potential to evaluate specific mechanisms, help personalise treatment, and make links between brain and mind. However, it should not be pursued because of pious hopes that it will bring ‘low hanging fruit’, or breakthroughs where psychotherapy research has had limited success – for example, by producing biomarkers that will ‘cut (psychological) nature at its joints’ and hence provide personalised treatment, oncology style. Instead, and for a long period of time, such neuroscience is and must be developed for its honest and invaluable story of how patients and therapists explain their embodied, social minds and work with each other. Such research cannot be carried out by neuroscientists without the wisdom of therapists. Hence, we invite therapists to help shape computational neuroscience useful to psychotherapy.