An article series connecting Bayesian cognitive neuroscience and psychotherapy, exploring how the brain predicts, learns, and updates beliefs under uncertainty. The articles examine what this approach offers for understanding anxiety, the need for control, and the mechanisms of cognitive behavioral therapy.

  1. The Brain as a “Bayesian Machine”: Uncertainty, Prediction, and the Illusion of Control

  2. Exposure as Bayesian Learning: How New Experience Changes the Brain’s Predictions of Danger

  3. Why Exposure Sometimes Does Not Work: Safety Behaviors, Precision, and Belief Updating

  4. Anxiety as a Disorder of Prediction: Predictive Processing and the Expectation of Danger

  5. Panic Disorder from a Bayesian Perspective: When a Bodily Sensation Becomes Evidence of Danger

  6. Intolerance of Uncertainty as a Bayesian Problem

  7. Does CBT Change the Brain? What We Actually Know About Neuroplasticity

  8. Cognitive Restructuring as Belief Updating

  9. Psychotherapy as Prediction Testing, Rather Than Simply “Changing Thoughts”