No, EMDR therapy does not work on the principles of exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is a constituent of cognitive-behavioral therapy that involves the subject reliving a previous traumatic incident in order to overcome it. The therapist will ask the client to jot down or explain the painful events that occurred. The patient may be asked to name specific sights, sounds, and settings that they avoid as a result of the past experience and to score them according to their level of distress. The benefit of EMDR therapy is that the individual is not re-traumatized by recalling all the details of the trauma. EMDR therapy creates a learning condition in the brain that enables these experiences to be properly preserved. This is the primary distinction between exposure therapy and EMDR; the patient is not re-exposed to the trauma.