Developing constructs for psychopathology research: Research domain criteria.

Abstract

There exists a divide between findings from integrative neuroscience and clinical research focused on mechanisms of psychopathology. Specifically, a clear correspondence does not emerge between clusters of complex clinical symptoms and dysregulated neurobiological systems, with many apparent redundancies. For instance, many mental disorders involve multiple disruptions in putative mechanistic factors (e.g., excessive fear, deficient impulse control), and different disrupted mechanisms appear to play major roles in many disorders. The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework is a heuristic to facilitate the incorporation of behavioral neuroscience in the study of psychopathology. Such integration might be achieved by shifting the central research focus of the field away from clinical description to more squarely examine aberrant mechanisms. RDoC first aims to identify reliable and valid psychological and biological mechanisms and their disruptions, with an eventual goal of understanding how anomalies in these mechanisms drive psychiatric symptoms. This approach will require new methods to ascertain samples, relying on hypothesized psychopathological mechanisms to define experimental groups instead of traditional diagnostic categories. RDoC, by design, uncouples research efforts from clinically familiar categories to focus directly on fundamental mechanisms of psychopathology. RDoC proposes a matrix of domains and levels of analyses and invites the field to test and refine the framework. If RDoC is successful, the domains will ultimately relate to familiar psychopathologies in ways that promote new knowledge regarding etiology and more efficient development of new preventive and treatment interventions.

Neural markers of positive reappraisal and their associations with trait reappraisal and worry.

“…This design choice also aligns well with recent efforts to develop novel ways for classifying psychopathology in neurobehavioral terms (Morris & Cuthbert, 2012;Sanislow et al, 2010).…”

Rumination in bipolar disorder: a systematic review

“…39 In this scenario, rumination could relate and integrate cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components with advances in genetic, molecular, cellular, and neural circuit research. 40 The goal would be to help improve the current diagnostic model, which groups symptoms into clusters and disregards the neurobiological bases of symptoms. 41 Obviously, this hypothesis requires wide further investigation before it can be considered valid and reliable.…”

Connecting psychopathology meta-structure and mechanisms.

“…(For more detailed descriptions of the NIMH RDoC, see Cuthbert & Insel, 2013; Insel et al, 2010;Kozak & Cuthbert, 2016;Sanislow et al, 2010.) Then, practical matters for implementation, including how RDoC facilitates translational research, are addressed.…”

“…Different levels of model hierarchy may serve different purposes, from providing a broad sampling frame for a higher order structure to a very narrow and specific lower order structure that might directly link to a neural circuit. A fertile connection of meta-structures of psychopathology with RDoC is that higher order dimensions can be used to select research participants or define what has been termed the sampling frame (see Sanislow et al, 2010). Conway et al (2016) argued that sampling based on transdiagnostic phenotypes ".…”