It has been recently demonstrated that some results obtained in neuroscience research, which confirm the existence of a relationship between neurophysiological mechanisms and thought and human behaviour, can be successfully applied in psychotherapy, both in clinical and research. As a consequence the psychotherapeutic treatment, aimed to modify cognitive processes, should be supported by the integration between neuroscience foundlings and behavioural sciences.

The Neuropshychophysiological (NPP) oriented psychotherapy is founded on the integration of the above mentioned disciplines applied to the clinic studies of the different functioning of the two cerebral hemispheres in perception, processing and information response.

In the last two decades neuroscience research pointed out various features related to the differences of the two cerebral hemispheres: the right hemisphere performs an objective perceptual modality and a conceptually-related information processing; the left hemisphere performs a model-related perceptual modality and information processing. Moreover, in the case of the left hemisphere processing latencies are very short (stimulus/response) since they depend both on the activation of automatism and on the recall of preordered patterns, while in the case of the right hemisphere latencies are longer (stimulus/evaluation/response).

Frontal lobe activity stimulation represents a fundamental goal of NPP Psychotherapy; in particular the stimulation of will, planning, perseverance, etc. (frontal lobe higher functions) allows the patient to block automatic information processing and to manage the information processing through self-regulation. In fact, only the knowledge of the mechanisms that produce thoughts and emotions would enable the therapist to single out the pathological component of a patient’s way of thinking and to stimulate those abilities he/she is lacking as well as to inhibit the automatism fostering the conscious activity in the management of information processing.