Quantifying the Relations among Neurophysiological Responses, Dimensional Psychopathology, and Personality Traits

The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) model, one of the transdiagnostic dimensional models of psychopathology proposed by the National Institute of Mental Health, emphasizes the integration of basic biological science into clinical research. The event-related negativity (ERN), a deflection in electroencephalogram after making an error, is a promising neurophysiological indicator for such endeavor. However, RDoC model posits that ERN is related to three of the five broad dimensions without any indication of how ERN relates differently across the dimensions. Recent research indicate that ERNs elicited from different tasks do not elicit the exact same ERNs. Therefore, constructing theoretically guided tasks and contextualizing them with other indicators may provide a promising avenue for the better integration of ERN into the RDoC framework. Four flanker tasks using different types of stimuli were constructed. The three RDoC domains posited to be indicated by ERNs also have only a few or no hypothesized self-report indicators. In this study, the five-factor model (FFM) of personality and three dimensional psychopathological models that matched the description of the RDoC domain were used as self-report indicator of the domains. The results indicated that the ERNs elicited from the tasks could be explained by one underlying general ERN. However, the tasks also seem to have task-specific variances and are important. Although general and task-specific ERNs may have different patterns in relationships with self-reported traits, these were generally small and did not have the expected pattern. Interpretation of these relationships, limitations, and future directions are also discussed