Brain Plasticity in Health and Disease: From Molecules to Circuits
A special issue of Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425). This special issue belongs to the section "Systems Neuroscience".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2026 | Viewed by 1
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Brain plasticity is one of the most amazing phenomena occurring continuously in our daily lives. A myriad of events occurring at the subcellular, cellular, and circuit levels underly our ability to learn, remember, adapt to new situations, or extinguish non-adaptive behaviors. The occurrence of these events ultimately modulates behavior and cognition. Positive as well as negative plasticity may occur when facing a particular situation, like brain injury, a brain vascular event, or brain inflammation due to an infection, and accompanying events may ultimately lead to functional reorganization or altered non-adaptive responses. Adaptive plastic mechanisms also change throughout life, being more prominent during early postnatal stages or childhood and declining with age. In this Special Issue, we aim to gather original research and reviews, including basic and clinical studies, that provide the reader with an overview of the current research on brain plasticity mechanisms, from epigenetic events to brain circuit remodeling, that ultimately impact behavior. Recent findings in brain plasticity using cutting-edge technology show many events that are presumed to occur but have not been proven until now, like epigenetic changes in brain cells underlying transgenerational disease, the role of astrocytes in the formation of memory engrams, the participation of areas remote to a lesion in functional recovery, or the involvement of neurogenesis in circuit remodeling.
This Special Issue welcomes the following article types but is not limited to them: original basic and clinical research, opinions, minireviews, methods, reviews, and perspectives.
Prof. Dr. Angélica Zepeda
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Brain Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- brain damage
- neurorepair
- brain development
- brain maps
- brain circuits
- neurodegeneration
- aging
- neurogenesis
- neurorehabilitation
- learning and memory
- epigenetics
- behavior
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.
