Application of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Evidence-Based Psychotherapy

Abstract

This perspective article discusses the importance of evidence-based psychotherapy and highlights the usefulness of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in assessing the effects of psychotherapeutic interventions as a future direction of clinical psychology. NIRS is a safe and non-invasive neuroimaging technique that can be implemented in a clinical setting to measure brain activity via a simple procedure. This article discusses the possible benefits and challenges of applying NIRS for this purpose, and the available methodology based on previous studies that used NIRS to evaluate psychotherapeutic effects. Furthermore, this perspective article suggests alternative methodologies that may be useful, namely, the single- and multi-session evaluations using immediate pre- and post-intervention measurements. These methods can be used to evaluate state changes in brain activity, which can be derived from a single session of psychotherapeutic interventions. This article provides a conceptual schema important in actualizing NIRS application for evidence-base psychotherapy.