My research

My main research interest is the application of an integrative and dynamic approach to investigate the biological bases of psychiatric disorders and the relative therapeutic strategies. I am particularly interested in complexity science and philosophical considerations on the effectiveness of scientific approaches aimed at understanding the functioning of the central nervous system and bridging brain and mind. Current efforts are directed towards studying the interplay between plasticity, contextual factors, and mental health, and developing network-based strategies to operationalize plasticity and phase transitions in psychiatry.

IAS Fellowship

My research aims to explore whether, when conceptualizing systems as networks, the connectivity strength among system elements serves as a measure of plasticity, that is the susceptibility to change. In the context of mental health, this translates to asking whether the connectivity strength among a patient's symptoms is an indicator of their ability to recover and transition from psychopathology to wellbeing. As the measure of plasticity pertains to basic features of complex systems, I am interested in exploring whether its operationalization is generalizable across fields.

Plasticity, defined as the ability to modify brain functioning and mental state/behavior, is increasingly recognized as a crucial process in mental health as it underlies the reorganization of mental processes during the transition from psychopathology to wellbeing. However, plasticity does not determine the direction in which transitions occur. The direction is determined by moderating factors such as contextual ones. Accordingly, the effects of treatments enhancing plasticity on mental states have been shown to be highly context-dependent. Thus, assessing plasticity levels alongside the quality of life context represents a promising avenue to advance therapeutic strategies in mental health.

To this goal, building on Borsboom's groundbreaking Network Theory of Mental Health, I recently introduced a view proposing that connectivity strength among the elements of a system is a measure of its plasticity and ability to change the outcome (Branchi, 2022, Plasticity in mental health: A network theory, Neurosci Biobehav Rev). In a highly connected network, each element is limited in its ability to change as its modifications are constrained by the necessity of simultaneously modifying all the other connected elements.

Conversely, in a weakly connected network, each element can be modified with limited or no constraints. Plasticity has thus been operationalized as the inverse of connectivity strength. When conceptualizing an individual as a network of interconnected symptoms, their plasticity and ability to transition from psychopathology to wellbeing is expected to be inversely proportional to the connectivity strength among the symptoms of the psychopathology. Though we have recently demonstrated such view (Delli Colli, 2024, Towards a network-based operationalization of plasticity for predicting the transition from depression to mental health, Nature Mental Health), this operationalization still requires refinement and modeling.