Translating intermediate phenotypes to psychopathology: the NIMH Research Domain Criteria

The Research Domain Criteria project (RDoC) was initiated by the National Institute of Mental Health in early 2009 to "develop, for research purposes, new ways of classifying mental disorders based on dimensions of observable behavior and neurobiological measures." RDoC provides a framework for psychopathology research intended to explicate specific aspects of functional impairment by studying relevant brain-behavior relationships, in contrast to the current heterogeneous categories of mental disorders defined by various groupings of symptoms. Endophenotypes fit naturally into the RDoC context since they are typically conceived to be closer to fundamental neural and psychological mechanisms than more abstracted disorder categories. Consequently, the genomic aspects of endophenotypes take on particular significance for understanding genetic risk architectures in such an approach to psychopathology.