Child maltreatment is characterized as the abuse or neglect of individuals under the age of 18. Maltreatment is a prevalent public health issue with widespread impacts. Children who experience maltreatment are more vulnerable to significant changes in their developing brains. These disruptions can have profound and lasting consequences, undermining critical emotional and cognitive processes. The amygdala and prefrontal cortex (PFC) are fundamental brain structures involved in cognitive and emotional functioning. The amygdala-PFC connectivity plays a central role in regulating emotions and behavior by working as a unified circuit that shapes emotional processing and regulation. Maltreatment has been linked to alterations in stress-response systems, diminished emotional regulation, and other behavioral and cognitive disorders. 

The goal of this systematic review is to summarize the field’s current understanding of the effects of maltreatment on amydala-PFC connectivity and functioning, and subsequent effects on emotional and behavioral outcomes. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, a standardized set of search terms was used in two databases, Psych Info and PubMed. The initial search identified 529 records; 311 duplicates were removed, 372 abstracts were screened for eligibility, 58 articles underwent full-text review, and 17 studies met the inclusion criteria. The next steps will be extracting relevant data from these studies, including demographic information, study methods, assessment, and behavioral outcomes. This extracted information will provide a synthesis of the current body of evidence and help identify the gaps in the literature, and inform treatment and prevention of concerns associated with maltreatment