Q4 - Traditional "talk" therapy, in which

[xinglipku]

Can you please help to explain why B is correct?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The argument concludes that physicians will eventually be able to treat psychological disorders with pharmacological intervention (medication). Why? Because one successful form of treatment produces chemical changes in the brain - which correspond with improvements in behavior.

The question asks us for what the argument is assuming and so we need to evaluate the reasoning. Does this argument make sense. Not necessarily. Why does it have to be true that physicians will be able to produce these chemical changes in the brain with pharmacological intervention? Or what if the improvement in the behavior just correlates with the chemical changes in the brain, but are not produced from them? Or what if the chemical changes in the brain are just one of several factors that lead to the improvement in the patient and that it is a conjunction of the chemical changes with something else that lead to the improvement?

Any of these concerns would undermine the argument and so an answer choice that defended the argument from one of them would represent an assumption of the argument - the last one expressed nicely in an answer choice (B).

Incorrect Answers
(A) may help the argument but is not necessary. We only need some neurochemical changes to produce psychological changes.
(C) undermines the argument.
(D) is out of scope. Why should neuroscience and psychology be indistinguishable.
(E) may explain why we would want to treat patients with neurochemistry, but is not necessary to the argument's reasoning.

[fourfolkspa]

Not sure this will help, but for me personally, what stood out in the prompt were the words "seem to correspond." The prompt used this language, which to me screamed correlation, to argue for something that seemed to assume some sort of causation. B fills this gap in the argument.

[ttunden]

ok here is my analysis

So basically in this stimulus we learn that talk therapy produces chemical changes n the brain. Then we have a positive correlation between chemical changes in brain and improvement in certain aspects of patient's behavior.

Conclusion: physicians eventually able to treat SUCH patients as effectively thru medicine in brain's neurochemistry as through talk methods(mentioned in the beginning of the stimulus)

so my immediate thoughts are: ok, so author is saying that if we use something else that produces chemical changes in the brain it will have similar effects. Moreover, I notice a new term here: neurochemistry, so I will be cognizant of it in the answer choices as it may help us connect the evidence to our conclusion.

Whatever it is that we choose it has to help the argument and perhaps validate the comparison/prediction that the author is utilizing in the conclusion

A - no, this is pretty extreme. The "all" is an automatic red flag for me. Also, i don't recall any psychological changes in the stimulus. Going to eliminate this. Author doesn't need to assume ALL for this question
B - This looks good. It mentions the new term, and it validates the comparison making the medicine method similar to talk therapy method. keep
C - nah, i don't like this psychological change and it doesn't really match my prephase. This doesn't seem necessary and perhaps it seems extraneous. If I negate it, it doesn't do anything. eliminate
D - i am usually wary of conditional reasoning answer choices in necessary assumption questions. The necessary part(2nd half) is not something the author is assuming. They do not have to be indistinguishable from eachother. IE the same method or duplicate. Not required to derive the authors conclusion
E - less expensive?? out of scope. eliminate automatically.

Thus we are left with B, which is the best choice of the bunch and matches my prephase.

[andrewgong01]

I am not understanding what "B" does that makes the argument correct. To me it seems like the argument is saying talking therapy is just as effective as pharmacological intervention since both intervene in the neurochemistry of the brain.

Choice B says the improvements produced by the talk is only through chemical changes in the brain's neurochemistry. When negated, it says the changes produced was not only through chemical changes but I don't see how that destroys the argument because in the end we are concerned with wether or not both methods can allow us to treat the disorders and if "talk therapy" has impacts through other channels too it does not matter. When going through the question, I thought had "b" said improvements by pharmacological occur only via the given changes" would have been correct as we need to assume there are no other mechanisms to which pharmacological methods treat the disorder and such method is required.

[ohthatpatrick]

"B" doesn't make the argument correct
(that's our task on Sufficient Assumption, but this is Nec Assump)

SUFF ASSUMP = which answer, if true, proves the conclusion
NEC ASSUMP = which answer, if negated, most weakens

The conclusion is NOT saying
"talk therapy is just as effective as drugs", as you were suggesting.

Instead, the author established that 'talk therapy is effective' in the evidence, and his conclusion predicts that "one day, drugs will be as effective as talk therapy."

How will drugs be as effective? The author thinks that we'll look at the brain changes that result from talk therapy and then design drugs to manufacture the same brain changes.

How would we argue that drugs WON'T be as effective as talk therapy? We'd argue that the drugs couldn't fully mimic the positive effects of talk therapy.

If we negate (B), it says that "some of the positive effects of talk therapy do NOT have anything to do with changes in neurochemistry."

That sounds like our best available objection (from these answer choices), in terms of arguing that drugs will NOT be as effective as talk therapy.