A Connectome-wide Functional Signature of Transdiagnostic Risk for Mental Illness

Abstract

Background: High rates of comorbidity, shared risk, and overlapping therapeutic mechanisms have led psychopathology research toward transdiagnostic dimensional investigations of clustered symptoms. One influential framework accounts for these transdiagnostic phenomena through a single general factor, sometimes referred to as the p factor, associated with risk for all common forms of mental illness.

Methods: We build on previous research identifying unique structural neural correlates of the p factor by conducting a data-driven analysis of connectome-wide intrinsic functional connectivity (n = 605).

Results: We demonstrate that higher p factor scores and associated risk for common mental illness maps onto hyperconnectivity between visual association cortex and both frontoparietal and default mode networks.

Conclusions: These results provide initial evidence that the transdiagnostic risk for common forms of mental illness is associated with patterns of inefficient connectome-wide intrinsic connectivity between visual association cortex and networks supporting executive control and self-referential processes, networks that are often impaired across categorical disorders.

Keywords: Connectivity; Psychopathology; Resting state; Transdiagnostic; fMRI; p factor.