Definitions of the RDoC Domains and Constructs

Overview

The current version of the RDoC matrix is constructed around six major domains of human functioning. These domains reflect contemporary knowledge about major systems of emotion, cognition, motivation, and social behavior. Within each domain are behavioral elements, processes, mechanisms, and responses, called constructs, that comprise different aspects of the overall range of functions. Constructs are studied along a span of functioning from normal to abnormal, with the understanding that each is situated in, and affected by, environmental and neurodevelopmental contexts. Measurement of constructs can occur using several different methods termed units of analysis. Units of analysis can include genetic, neurocircuit, behavioral, and self-report assessments.

The RDoC matrix depicts the domains, constructs, and units of analysis that are currently part of the RDoC framework; however, the matrix was created to be responsive to emerging research and will change as research accrues and evolves.

The definitions of the RDoC domains -- and their constructs and subconstructs -- are provided below. Although the construct definitions are presented separately, researchers recognize that there is interaction and overlap among each domain.

RDoC Domain and Construct Definitions

Negative Valence Systems

Negative Valence Systems are primarily responsible for responses to aversive situations or context, such as fear, anxiety, and loss.

Constructs:

• Acute Threat (Fear): Activation of the brain’s defensive motivational system to promote behaviors that protect the organism from perceived danger. Normal fear involves a pattern of adaptive responses to conditioned or unconditioned threat stimuli (exteroceptive or interoceptive). Fear can involve internal representations and cognitive processing and can be modulated by a variety of factors.
• Potential Threat (Anxiety): Activation of a brain system in which harm may potentially occur but is distant, ambiguous, or low/uncertain in probability, characterized by a pattern of responses such as enhanced risk assessment (vigilance). These responses to low imminence threats are qualitatively different than the high imminence threat behaviors that characterize fear.
• Sustained Threat: An aversive emotional state caused by prolonged (i.e., weeks to months) exposure to internal and/or external condition(s), state(s), or stimuli that are adaptive to escape or avoid. The exposure may be actual or anticipated; the changes in affect, cognition, physiology, and behavior caused by sustained threat persist in the absence of the threat and can be differentiated from those changes evoked by acute threat.
• Loss: A state of deprivation of a motivationally significant con-specific, object, or situation. Loss may be social or non-social and may include permanent or sustained loss of shelter, behavioral control, status, loved ones, or relationships. The response to loss may be episodic (e.g., grief) or sustained.
• Frustrative Nonreward: Reactions elicited in response to withdrawal/prevention of reward, i.e., by the inability to obtain positive rewards following repeated or sustained efforts.

Positive Valence Systems

Positive Valence Systems are primarily responsible for responses to positive motivational situations or contexts, such as reward seeking, consummatory behavior, and reward/habit learning.

Constructs:

• Reward Responsiveness: Processes that govern an organism’s hedonic response to impending or possible reward (as reflected in reward anticipation), the receipt of reward (as reflected in initial response to reward) and following repeated receipt of reward (as in reward satiation); across these subdomains, reward responsiveness primarily reflects neural activity to receipt of reward and reward cues and can also be measured in terms of subjective and behavioral responses.
  
  Subconstructs:
  • Reward Anticipation: Processes associated with the ability to anticipate and/or represent a future incentive—as reflected in language expression, behavioral responses, and/or engagement of the neural systems to cues about a future positive reinforcer.
  • Initial Response to Reward: Processes evoked by the initial presentation of a positive reinforcer as reflected by indices of neuronal activity and verbal or behavioral responses.
  • Reward Satiation: Processes associated with the change in incentive value of a reinforcer over time as that reinforcer is consumed or experienced, as reflected in language expression, behavioral responses, and/or engagement of the neural systems.
    
    
• Reward Learning: A process by which organisms acquire information about stimuli, actions, and contexts that predict positive outcomes, and by which behavior is modified when a novel reward occurs, or outcomes are better than expected. Reward learning is a type of reinforcement learning.
  
  Subconstructs:
  • Probabilistic and Reinforcement Learning: The ability to learn which actions or stimuli are associated with obtaining a reinforcer, even when a particular action or stimulus is not always associated with obtaining the reinforcer.
  • Reward Prediction Error: Processes associated with the difference between anticipated and obtained rewards are important for reinforcement learning. The error can indicate that the reward received was either larger than expected (positive prediction error) or smaller than expected (negative prediction error).
  • Habit: Sequential, repetitive, motor behaviors or cognitive processes elicited by external or internal triggers that, once initiated, can go to completion without continuous effortful oversight. Habits can be adaptive by virtue of freeing up cognitive resources. Habit formation is a frequent consequence of reward learning, but, over time, its expression can become resistant to changes in outcome value. Some habit-related behaviors could be pathological expressions of processes that under other circumstances subserve adaptive goals.
    
    
• Reward Valuation: Processes by which the probability and benefits of a prospective outcome are computed by reference to external information, social context (e.g., group input), and/or prior experience. This computation is influenced by preexisting biases, learning, memory, stimulus characteristics, and deprivation states. Reward valuation may involve the assignment of incentive salience to stimuli.
  
  Subconstructs:
  • Reward (ambiguity/risk): Process by which the value of a reinforcer is computed as a function of its magnitude, valence and predictability.
  • Delay: Processes by which the value of a reinforcer is computed as a function of its magnitude and the time interval prior to its expected delivery.
  • Effort: Processes by which the value of a reinforcer is computed as a function of its magnitude and the perceived costs of the physical or cognitive effort required to obtain it.

Cognitive Systems

Cognitive Systems are responsible for various cognitive processes.

Constructs:

• Attention: Attention refers to a range of processes that regulate access to capacity-limited systems, such as awareness, higher perceptual processes, and motor action. The concepts of capacity limitation and competition are inherent to the concepts of selective and divided attention.
  
  
• Perception: Perception refers to the process(es) that perform computations on sensory data to construct and transform representations of the external environment, acquire information from, and make predictions about, the external world, and guide action.
  
  Subconstructs:
  • Visual Perception
  • Auditory Perception
  • Olfactory/Somatosensory/Multimodal/Perception
    
    
• Declarative Memory: Declarative memory is the acquisition or encoding, storage and consolidation, and retrieval of representations of facts and events. Declarative memory provides the critical substrate for relational representations—i.e., for spatial, temporal, and other contextual relations among items, contributing to representations of events (episodic memory) and the integration and organization of factual knowledge (semantic memory). These representations facilitate the inferential and flexible extraction of new information from these relationships.
  
  
• Language: Language is a system of shared symbolic representations of the world, the self and abstract concepts that supports thought and communication.
  
  
• Cognitive Control: A system that modulates the operation of other cognitive and emotional systems, in the service of goal-directed behavior, when prepotent modes of responding are not adequate to meet the demands of the current context. Additionally, control processes are engaged in the case of novel contexts, where appropriate responses need to be selected from among competing alternatives.
  
  Subconstructs:
  • Goal Selection, Updating, Representation, and Maintenance
  • Response Selection; Inhibition/Suppression
  • Performance Monitoring
    
    
• Working Memory: Working Memory is the active maintenance and flexible updating of goal/task relevant information (items, goals, strategies, etc.) in a form that has limited capacity and resists interference. These representations: may involve flexible binding of representations; may be characterized by the absence of external support for the internally maintained representations; and are frequently temporary, though this may be due to ongoing interference. It involves active maintenance, flexible updating, limited capacity, and interference control.
  
  Subconstructs:
  • Active Maintenance
  • Flexible updating
  • Limited Capacity
  • Interference Control

Systems for Social Processes

Systems for Social Processes mediate responses in interpersonal settings of various types, including perception and interpretation of others’ actions.

Constructs:

• Affiliation and Attachment: Affiliation is engagement in positive social interactions with other individuals. Attachment is selective affiliation as a consequence of the development of a social bond. Affiliation and Attachment are moderated by social information processing (processing of social cues) and social motivation. Affiliation is a behavioral consequence of social motivation and can manifest itself in social approach behaviors. Affiliation and Attachment require detection of and attention to social cues, as well as social learning and memory associated with the formation of relationships.
  
  Affiliation and Attachment include both the positive physiological consequences of social interactions and the behavioral and physiological consequences of disruptions to social relationships. Clinical manifestations of disruptions in Affiliation and Attachment include social withdrawal, social indifference and anhedonia, and over-attachment.
  
  
• Social Communication: Social communication is a dynamic process that includes both receptive and productive aspects used for exchange of socially relevant information. Social communication is essential for the integration and maintenance of the individual in the social environment. This construct is reciprocal and interactive, and social communication abilities may appear very early in life.
  
  Social communication is distinguishable from other cognitive systems (e.g., perception, cognitive control, memory, attention) in that it particularly involves interactions with conspecifics. The underlying neural substrates of social communication evolved to support both automatic/reflexive and volitional control, including the motivation and ability to engage in social communication. Receptive aspects may be implicit or explicit; examples include affect recognition, facial recognition and characterization. Productive aspects include eye contact, expressive reciprocation, and gaze following.
  
  Although facial communication was set aside as a separate sub-construct for the purposes of identifying matrix elements, social communication typically utilizes information from several modalities, including facial, vocal, gestural, postural, and olfactory processing.
  
  Subconstructs:
  • Reception of Facial Communication: The capacity to perceive someone’s emotional state non-verbally based on facial expressions.
  • Production of Facial Communication: The capacity to convey one’s emotional state non-verbally via facial expression.
  • Reception of Non-Facial Communication: The capacity to perceive social and emotional information based on modalities other than facial expression, including non-verbal gestures, affective prosody, distress calling, cooing, etc.
  • Production of Non-Facial Communication: The capacity to express social and emotional information based on modalities other than facial expression, including non-verbal gestures, affective prosody, distress calling, cooing, etc.
    
    
• Perception and understanding of self: Perception and Understanding of Self includes the processes and/or representations involved in being aware of, accessing knowledge about, and/or making judgments about the self. These processes/representations can include current cognitive or emotional internal states, traits, and/or abilities, either in isolation or in relationship to others, as well as the mechanisms that support self-awareness, self-monitoring, and self-knowledge.
  
  Subconstructs:
  • Agency: The ability to recognize one’s self as the agent of one’s actions and thoughts, including the recognition of one’s own body/body parts.
  • Self-Knowledge: The ability to make judgments about one’s current cognitive or emotional internal states, traits, and/or abilities.
    
    
• Perception and understanding of others: Perception and Understanding of Others includes the processes and/or representations involved in being aware of, accessing knowledge about, reasoning about, and/or making judgments about other animate entities, including information about cognitive or emotional states, traits or abilities.
  
  Subconstructs:
  • Animacy Perception: The ability to appropriately perceive that another entity is an agent (i.e., has a face, interacts contingently, and exhibits biological motion).
  • Action Perception: The ability to perceive the purpose of an action being performed by an animate entity.
  • Understanding Mental States: The ability to make judgments and/or attributions about the mental state of other animate entities that allows one to predict or interpret their behaviors. Mental state refers to intentions, beliefs, desires, and emotions.

Arousal/Regulatory Systems

Arousal/Regulatory Systems are responsible for generating activation of neural systems as appropriate for various contexts and providing appropriate homeostatic regulation of such systems as energy balance and sleep.

Constructs:

• Arousal: Arousal is a continuum of sensitivity of the organism to stimuli, both external and internal. Arousal facilitates interaction with the environment in a context-specific manner (e.g., under conditions of threat, some stimuli must be ignored while sensitivity to and responses to others is enhanced, as exemplified in the startle reflex). It can be evoked by either external/environmental stimuli or internal stimuli (e.g., emotions and cognition). It can be modulated by the physical characteristics and motivational significance of stimuli. It varies along a continuum that can be quantified in any behavioral state, including wakefulness and low-arousal states including sleep, anesthesia, and coma. Arousal is distinct from motivation and valence but can covary with intensity of motivation and valence. It may be associated with increased or decreased locomotor activity, and can be regulated by homeostatic drives (e.g., hunger, sleep, thirst, sex).
  
  
• Circadian Rhythms: Circadian rhythms are endogenous self-sustaining oscillations that organize the timing of biological systems to optimize physiology and behavior, and health. They are synchronized by recurring environmental cues; anticipate the external environment; allow effective response to challenges and opportunities in the physical and social environment; modulate homeostasis within the brain and other (central/peripheral) systems, tissues and organs; are evident across levels of organization including molecules, cells, circuits, systems, organisms, and social systems.
  
  
• Sleep and wakefulness: Sleep and wakefulness are endogenous, recurring, behavioral states that reflect coordinated changes in the dynamic functional organization of the brain and that optimize physiology, behavior, and health. Homeostatic and circadian processes regulate the propensity for wakefulness and sleep.
  
  Sleep is reversible, typically characterized by postural recumbence, behavioral quiescence, and reduced responsiveness. Sleep has a complex architecture with predictable cycling of NREM/REM states (or the developmental equivalent of NREM/REM states). NREM and REM sleep have distinct neural substrates (circuitry, transmitters, modulators) and EEG oscillatory properties. The intensity and duration of sleep are affected by homeostatic regulation and experiences during wakefulness. Sleep is evident at cellular, circuit, and system levels and has restorative and transformative effects that optimize neurobehavioral functions during wakefulness

Sensorimotor Systems

Sensorimotor systems are primarily responsible for the control and execution of motor behaviors, and their refinement during learning and development.

Constructs:

• Motor Actions: A multifaceted construct comprising the processes that must be engaged during the planning and execution of a motor action in a context-appropriate manner. Component processes include action planning and selection, sensorimotor dynamics, initiation, execution, and inhibition and termination. Of note, these processes will often be recruited in conjunction with motivational processes described in other domains, as when appetitive motivations drive approach behaviors. This construct explicitly includes the modulation and refinement of actions during development and learning. The list of subconstructs is not intended to imply a specific order or sequence.

  Subconstructs:

  • Action Planning and Selection: Processes whereby an individual engages a plan for spatial and temporal components of possible purposeful movements, which match internal and external constraints to achieve a goal. This may also include cost-benefit calculations in the development and selection of motor plans.
  • Sensorimotor Dynamics: Processes involved in the specification/parameterization of an action plan and program based on integration of internal or external information, such as sensations and urges and modeling of body dynamics. This process is continuously and iteratively refined via sensory information and reward-reinforced information.
  • Initiation: Processes involved in the initiation of a selected action plan; this may include timing of movement onset.
  • Execution: Processes involved in the actualization and adaptation of the action implementation.
  • Inhibition and termination: Processes involved in the inhibition of motor plans, either before or after an action is initiated, and the sense that a motor plan has been successfully completed. The inhibition sub-construct is commonly operationalized as motor response inhibition and has conceptual overlaps with the Inhibition/Suppression subconstruct of the Cognitive Control construct within the Cognitive Systems domain.
• Agency and ownership: The sense that one is initiating, executing, and in control of one’s volitional actions and their sensory consequences and the sense that one’s body or body parts belong to oneself. This may include the comparison of the predicted and actual sensory consequences of one’s action, awareness of the intention to move, temporal binding of self-generated action and their immediate effects, and attenuation of sensory consequences of self-generated actions.
• Habit: Learned stimulus-response mappings triggered by internal or external stimuli that are autonomous of the current value of the outcome or goal.  Habits may include overlearned sequences. Habits are implicit and efficient, requiring few cognitive resources, but can also be maladaptive under novel circumstances.  Habits are based on previous positively or negatively reinforced learning and commonly occur after extended learning. Both habit formation and expression are commonly operationalized within motor control systems. When habit formation is motivated by reward learning it overlaps with the Habit construct within the Positive Valence domain.

• Innate motor patterns: Unlearned action plans that may be triggered by internal or external stimuli. This can include such behaviors as stereotyped expressions of affect, orientation to salience, innate approach and withdrawal phenomena, and startle responses.

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Learn more about the development of the RDoC matrix.