The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) addressed in its 2008 Strategic Plan an emerging concern that the current diagnostic system was hampering translational research, as accumulating data suggested that the system’s disorder categories constituted heterogeneous syndromes rather than specific diseases. However, established practices in peer review placed high priority on that system’s disorders in evaluating grant applications for mental illness. To provide guidelines for alternative study designs, NIMH set a goal to develop new ways of studying psychopathology based on dimensions of measurable behavior and related neurobiological measures. The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project is the result, intended to build a literature that informs new conceptions of mental illness and future revisions to diagnostic manuals. The framework calls for the study of empirically derived fundamental dimensions characterized by related behavioral/psychological and neurobiological data (e.g., reward valuation, working memory). RDoC also emphasizes approaches including neurodevelopment, environmental effects, and the full range of dimensions of interest (from typical to increasingly abnormal), as well as research designs that integrate data across behavioral, biological, and self-report measures. This article provides an overview of the project’s first decade and its potential future directions. RDoC remains grounded in experimental psychopathology perspectives, and its progress is strongly linked to psychological measurement and integrative approaches to brain-behavior relationships.

国家心理健康研究所 (NIMH) 在其 2008 年战略计划中解决了一个新出现的问题，即当前的诊断系统正在阻碍转化研究，因为积累的数据表明该系统的疾病类别构成异质综合征而不是特定疾病。然而，同行评审的既定做法在评估精神疾病拨款申请时高度优先考虑该系统的障碍。为了为替代研究设计提供指导，NIMH 设定了一个目标，即根据可测量行为的维度和相关的神经生物学测量来开发研究精神病理学的新方法。研究领域标准 (RDoC) 项目是其结果，旨在建立一个文献，为精神疾病的新概念和诊断手册的未来修订提供信息。该框架要求研究以相关行为/心理和神经生物学数据为特征的经验派生基本维度（例如，奖励评估、工作记忆）。RDoC 还强调包括神经发育、环境影响和所有感兴趣的维度（从典型到越来越异常）在内的方法，以及整合行为、生物学和自我报告测量数据的研究设计。本文概述了该项目的第一个十年及其潜在的未来方向。RDoC 仍然立足于实验精神病理学的观点，其进展与心理测量和大脑行为关系的综合方法密切相关。