# Replicability, Mechanisms, and Trajectory of Neural Alterations Related to General Psychopathology

> **NIH NIH F32** · MCLEAN HOSPITAL · 2020 · $69,454

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
High rates of psychiatric comorbidity (~50% of adults) pose significant challenges to mental health research and
practice. Accumulating mental health research encourages a shift in focus towards transdiagnostic dimensional
features that are shared across categorical disorders due to difficulties identifying causes, biomarkers, and
treatments with specificity to individual disorders. In support of this shift, transdiagnostic research has identified
a general psychopathology factor – often called the ‘p’ factor – that accounts for shared variation across
internalizing, externalizing, and thought disorders in diverse samples. Identifying neural correlates of this general
psychopathology factor would substantiate its importance in characterizing the shared origins of mental disorders
and help us begin to understand the mechanisms through which the p factor may contribute to risk. Previous
research by the applicant has identified relations between the p factor and structural alterations within a
cerebello-thalamo-cortical circuit (CTCC), involved in higher-order cognitive and emotional processing. An F32
postdoctoral fellowship would allow the applicant to critically expand this research by examining replicability,
mechanisms, and trajectory of associations between CTCC neural alterations and p factor scores in two large,
openly available existing datasets: the Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics (CNP) and the Adolescent
Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) studies. The CNP includes healthy adults and patients (aged 21-50)
with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. ABCD includes a nationally
representative sample of youth (aged 9-10) who are being followed longitudinally for 10 years. Using data from
these two studies will allow the applicant to (1) examine whether the association between p factor scores and
CTCC alterations are identifiable in youth, prior to the onset of most major mental illnesses (ABCD), and in
patients with serious mental illness (CNP), (2) test neurocognitive mechanisms underlying this association, and
(3) trace unfolding of symptoms over time related to these neural alterations. In addition, the applicant will
conduct a feasibility study in healthy young adults to learn how to reliably activate the CTCC during a cognitive
control task and provide pilot data for future grants. With substantial research and training opportunities available
at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, the mentorship of Dr. Diego Pizzagalli (primary mentor), a leader
in the field of clinical neuroscience of depression, and the consultation of Dr. Roman Kotov (expert in statistical
modeling of psychiatric symptoms) and Dr. Blaise Frederick (expert in magnetic resonance imaging physics),
the applicant will receive training in all aspects of MRI experimental design and analysis, statistical modeling of
the structure and trajectory of symptoms over time, professional development sk...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10068032
- **Project number:** 1F32MH124409-01
- **Recipient organization:** MCLEAN HOSPITAL
- **Principal Investigator:** Adrienne Lynn Romer
- **Activity code:** F32 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $69,454
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-06-01 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10068032

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10068032, Replicability, Mechanisms, and Trajectory of Neural Alterations Related to General Psychopathology (1F32MH124409-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10068032. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*