Neurobiology and the Hierarchical Taxonomy ofPsychopathology: progress toward ontogenetically informed and clinically usefulnosology

Abstract

The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is an empirical structural model of psychological symptoms formulated to improve the reliability and validity of clinical assessment. Neurobiology can inform assessments of early risk and intervention strategies, and the HiTOP model has greater potential to interface with neurobiological measures than traditional categorical diagnoses given its enhanced reliability. However, one complication is that observed biological correlates of clinical symptoms can reflect various factors, ranging from dispositional risk to consequences of psychopathology. In this paper, we argue that the HiTOP model provides an optimized framework for conducting research on the biological correlates of psychopathology from an ontogenetic perspective that distinguishes among indicators of liability, current symptoms, and consequences of illness. Through this approach, neurobiological research can contribute more effectively to identifying individuals at high dispositional risk, indexing treatment-related gains, and monitoring the consequences of mental illness, consistent with the aims of the HiTOP framework.

The difference between trait disinhibition and impulsivity—and why it matters for clinical psychological science.

“…Furthermore, scale-assessed disinhibition is highly heritable , and twin modeling work has shown that genetic influences on disinhibition explain a substantial amount of variance in the heritability of substance use disorders (Hicks, Schalet, Malone, Iacono, & McGue, 2011;Joyner et al, 2020;Vrieze, McGue, Miller, Hicks, & Iacono, 2013) and other externalizing problems (Yancey et al, 2013). Given these and other lines of evidence (see Nelson & Foell, 2018, for a review), trait disinhibition has been conceptualized as a liability factor for externalizing psychopathology (Perkins, Joyner, et al, 2020; see also Iacono, Carlson, Taylor, Elkins, & McGue, 1999;Patrick, Venables, et al, 2013;Young et al, 2009). Importantly, disinhibition can be operationalized in other modalities of measurement besides self-report, including poor behavioral performance on executive function tasks (Venables et al, 2018;Young et al, 2009) and impaired brain responding in cognitive-attentional tasks (Brennan & Baskin-Sommers, 2018;Iacono, Carlson, Malone, & McGue, 2002;Nelson, Patrick, & Bernat, 2011;Patrick et al, 2006;Patrick, Venables, et al, 2013;Yancey et al, 2013).…”

“…This may be reflective of the theoretical model of equifinality (Cicchetti & Rogosch, 1996) on which the UPPS-P was based; originally, impulsigenic traits were conceptualized as alternative routes to impulsive behavior, but perhaps the equifinal outcome captured is more akin to psychological distress, dysregulation, and impairment. From this perspective, impulsigenic traits may be especially useful at higherorder levels of a hierarchical-dimensional framework for psychopathology (Kotov et al, 2017), whereas disinhibition may have greater utility for studying the narrower spectrum of impulsiveexternalizing problems (Perkins, Joyner, et al, 2020). Furthermore, the relative division between trait-dispositions and psychopathology should continue to be investigated (e.g., Watson, Clark, & Chmielewski, 2008).…”

Internal consistency and test–retest reliability of the P3 event‐related potential (ERP) elicited by alcoholic and non‐alcoholic beverage pictures

“…Future prospective studies also could characterize differences between the Alcohol Cue P3 (or ACR-P3) and the P3-AR within an ontogenetic framework (Perkins et al, 2020;Senner et al, 2015). The P3-AR reflects a heritable (Carlson & Iacono, 2006), domaingeneral cognitive deficit that increases risk for externalizing psychopathology, including substance use, as a premorbid liability (Harper et al, 2021;Joyner et al, 2020;Perlman et al, 2013).…”

Toward a multimodal measurement model for the neurobehavioral trait of affiliative capacity

“…The current study extends previously published work (Patrick, Venables, et al, 2013;Venables et al, 2015;Yancey et al, 2016) and provides an bridge between an important biobehavioral construct from the RDoC framework (i.e., social affiliation; Insel et al, 2010;Cuthbert & Insel, 2013) and major dimensions of the HiTOP psychopathology model (i.e., antagonistic externalizing, distress; Kotov et al, 2017;Krueger et al, 2018). With the recent emphasis on transdiagnostic research, there is a need for a coherent approach to linking dimensions of psychopathology to neural systems (Latzman et al, in press;Perkins et al, 2020), and multimodal measurement models for key NB traits can facilitate progress in this regard.…”

“…In addition, integrative assessments are likely to have clinical utility for identifying individuals with greater proclivity for risk behaviors, to be targeted for specialized intervention and prevention efforts (Mullins-Sweatt et al, 2020) Finally, due to the cross-sectional nature of the data, the current study was unable to address whether low AFF constitutes a liability for the development of psychopathology, or rather an outcome of such problems. Prior evidence suggests that psychoneurometric measures effectively capture heritable variance in common between traits and clinical conditions (Venables et al, 2017), but longitudinal work is also needed to establish that traits predate and contribute to the emergence of psychopathology (Perkins et al, 2020). Future research should capitalize on longitudinal datasets and initiatives to investigate long-term developmental trajectories of AFF− and other dispositional tendencies, beginning in early childhood.…”