ROBYN BLUHM: "RDoC AS AN ONTOLOGY FOR PSYCHIATRY AND NEUROSCIENCE"
For several years now, the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) has been developing a novel framework to guide research on mental disorders. The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project is intended to replace the framework provided by current diagnostic categories. According to the former NIMH Director, Thomas Insel, and his colleagues, the current categories are failing both psychiatrists and patients, in large part because “these categories, based upon presenting signs and symptoms, may not capture fundamental underlying mechanisms of dysfunction” (Insel et al., 2010, p. 748). RDoC, by contrast, aims “to generate classifications stemming from basic behavioral neuroscience. Rather than starting with an illness definition and seeking its neurobiological underpinnings, RDoC begins with current understandings of behavior-brain relationships and links them to clinical phenomena” (NIMH RDoC, 2011). In this talk, I consider the prospects for RDoC as a foundation for a new diagnostic ontology in psychiatry and as a framework that may be useful for cognitive neuroscientists. I will argue that the latter possibility is promising, but likely at the expense of the former goal.
References
Insel T., Cuthbert B., Garvey M., Heinssen R., Pine D.S., Quinn, K., Sanislow, C., Wang, P. (2010) Research Domain Criteria (RDoC): Toward a New Classification Framework for Research on Mental Disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry167(7):748-751.
References
Insel T., Cuthbert B., Garvey M., Heinssen R., Pine D.S., Quinn, K., Sanislow, C., Wang, P. (2010) Research Domain Criteria (RDoC): Toward a New Classification Framework for Research on Mental Disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry167(7):748-751.
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