Neuroscience-Informed Psychoeducation for Psychotherapy: Understanding How Therapy Supports Brain-Based Change
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Psychotherapy can be conceptualized as a structured, experience-dependent process of learning supported by neuroplasticity. Although psychotherapies differ in theory, technique, and therapeutic entry points, they may engage overlapping functional domains of therapeutic learning and change. This chapter presents a transdiagnostic, domain-based framework in which neuroplasticity provides the biological capacity for change and learning serves as the overarching therapeutic process. Five interacting domains organize the framework: emotion regulation and threat learning; cognitive control and belief updating; memory updating and integration; motivation, reinforcement, and habit learning; and social and relational learning and co-regulation. These domains are conceptual organizers rather than discrete mechanisms common to all psychotherapies. Repeated and emotionally meaningful experiences may support changes in expectations, emotional responses, memories, behavior, self-understanding, and interpersonal functioning. The framework also provides a practical structure for neuroscience-informed psychoeducation (NIPE). Connecting therapeutic activities with accessible explanations of relevant neuroscience may clarify the treatment rationale, reduce self-blame, support engagement, and foster realistic expectations about change. Consistent with a biopsychosocial perspective, the framework integrates neurobiological processes with meaning, agency, relationships, and environmental context rather than treating them as competing explanations. Domain-based NIPE may help bridge neuroscience and psychotherapy, although its effects on treatment engagement, therapeutic alliance, persistence, and clinical outcomes require empirical evaluation.
Source: PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Authors: Marc L. Copersino, Jamie Berry
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214760039