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Group Cognitive Behavior Therapy Reversed Abnormal Spontaneous Brain Activity in Adult Asthmatic Patients

hours and treatment costs [3] . Furthermore, GCBT has a consistent positive effect on asthma-related quality of life and depressive symptoms [4] . However, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie these effects. With the development of neuroimaging techniques, it has become increasingly possible to observe the neurobiological underpinnings of psychotherapeutic interventions. To the best of our knowledge, GCBT-related neuroimaging studies of asthmatic patients have not yet been reported. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in combination with task completion, Yoshimura et al. [5] investigated the relationship between GCBT and activity in certain brain regions in patients suffering from depression. They observed that the medial prefrontal cortex and ventral anterior cingulate cortex showed increased activity in association with positive stimuli and decreased activity in association with negative stimuli [5] . This study advances the understanding of the mechanisms by which GCBT improves depressive symptoms and further suggests that fMRI might potentially be an appropriate method to identify mechanisms of GCBT in patients with asthma. Our study sought to investigate spontaneous brain activity before and after GCBT in adult asthmatic patients with regional homogeneity (ReHo), which reflects the temporal homogeneity of the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal. We hypothesized that abnormal brain activity associated with certain brain Bronchial asthma is a multifactorial chronic inflammatory respiratory disease that results in reversible airflow restriction. An epidemiological investigation reported that the prevalence of depression is 13.41% among Chinese asthmatic patients [1] . In addition, depressive symptoms increase the risk of adult asthma independently of health-related lifestyle factors [2] . Group cognitive behavioral therapy (GCBT) is a treatment that reduces therapist Received: August 7, 2016 Accepted after revision: November 17, 2016 Published online: May 11, 2017