Dysfunctions of decision-making and cognitive control as transdiagnostic mechanisms of mental disorders: Advances, gaps, and needs in current research
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Disadvantageous decision-making and impaired volitional control over actions, thoughts, and emotions are characteristics of a wide range of mental disorders such as addiction, eating disorders, depression, and anxiety disorders and may reflect transdiagnostic core mechanisms and possibly vulnerability factors. Elucidating the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms is a precondition for moving from symptom-based to mechanism-based disorder classifications and ultimately mechanism-targeted interventions. However, despite substantial advances in basic research on decision-making and cognitive control, there are still profound gaps in our current understanding of dysfunctions of these processes in mental disorders. Central unresolved questions are: (i) to which degree such dysfunctions reflect transdiagnostic mechanisms or disorder-specific patterns of impairment; (ii) how phenotypical features of mental disorders relate to dysfunctional control parameter settings and aberrant interactions between large-scale brain systems involved in habit and reward-based learning, performance monitoring, emotion regulation, and cognitive control; (iii) whether cognitive control impairments are consequences or antecedent vulnerability factors of mental disorders; (iv) whether they reflect generalized competence impairments or context-specific performance failures; (v) whether not only impaired but also chronic over-control contributes to mental disorders. In the light of these gaps, needs for future research are: (i) an increased focus on basic cognitive-affective mechanisms underlying decision and control dysfunctions across disorders; (ii) longitudinal-prospective studies systematically incorporating theory-driven behavioural tasks and neuroimaging protocols to assess decision-making and control dysfunctions and aberrant interactions between underlying large-scale brain systems; (iii) use of latent-variable models of cognitive control rather than single tasks; (iv) increased focus on the interplay of implicit and explicit cognitive-affective processes; (v) stronger focus on computational models specifying neurocognitive mechanisms underlying phenotypical expressions of mental disorders.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 41-57 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | International journal of methods in psychiatric research |
Volume | 23 |
Issue number | S1 |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2014 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
External IDs
PubMed | 24375535 |
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Keywords
Sustainable Development Goals
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- Cognitive control, Decision-making, Large-scale brain systems, Transdiagnostic mechanisms, Volition