Momentary Brain Imaging Assessment of Neuroplasticity in Psychiatric Illness: Protocol for Systematic Review

BackgroundNeuroplasticity describes the brains ability to adapt in response to alterations in the environment, and is fundamental to learning. Reduced neuroplasticity has been proposed to underlie several psychiatric symptoms and disorders. Advances in neuroimaging have provided new methods for examining or indexing the potential for neuroplastic changes in-vivo. The proposed systematic review and meta-analysis will synthesize research utilizing neuroimaging assessments to compare the potential for rapid brain changes between individuals with commonly-studied psychiatric disorders relative to healthy control peers (HC). MethodsThis systematic review will include studies comparing the potential for neuroplastic changes between individuals with commonly-studied psychiatric disorders (mood, anxiety, compulsive, trauma-related, eating, and schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders). Included studies will assess neuroplasticity using established or putative neuroimaging biomarkers. Longitudinal studies, studies using non-neuroimaging methods to assess neuroplastic potential, and animal studies will be excluded. PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and PsycINFO will be searched using predefined terms. Two independent reviewers will screen titles, abstracts, and full texts using Rayyan, with conflicts resolved by a third reviewer. Data including study and participant characteristics will be extracted. Summary statistics will be combined and analyzed using random-effects meta-analyses to estimate the average difference in neuroplasticity between groups. In the event of heterogeneity, subgroup analyses and meta-regression will explore potential moderators of the between-group difference. The extent to which publication bias is likely to impact the findings of the review will be assessed using Eggers test. DiscussionThis review will summarize alterations in neuroplasticity, as indicated by momentary neuroimaging assessments, among individuals with major psychiatric disorders. As research increasingly links psychiatric conditions to neuroplasticity, this review will offer a valuable resource for understanding how neuroplasticity can be measured in-vivo to examine mechanisms of psychiatric illness. Systematic review registrationThis review is registered in PROSPERO (registration number: CRD42025630626)