Mental health disorders pose a massive economic and societal burden. Emerging early in development and resulting in long-term disability, neurodevelopmental dysfunctions (NDD) compromise the quality of life of millions of Europeans, with implications for the sustainability of health systems and the likelihood of achieving the Europe 2020 strategy on economic growth. The indirect costs of mental dysfunctions, estimated by the European Brain Council (EBC) at ~800 billion euros per year, make up around 40% of the total costs, making the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental health problems is a public health challenge. Most urgent are mental health problems that arise in early development since disability at this stage affects the entire lifespan and predicts later dysfunctions (see
http://www.braincouncil.eu/(opens in new window) activities/projects/).
The Neo-PRISM-C, a four-year project funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 Program (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (2019-2023) aims to study neurodevelopmental dysfunctions (NDD). The purpose of the Neo-PRISM-C ETN is to train Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) from multiple disciplines (psychology, neuroscience, data science) in applying the Research Domain Criteria approach, a novel framework initiated by the USA National Institute of Mental Health1 for understanding psychopathology, in order to inform and begin to test appropriate treatments. Neo-PRISM-C is expected to further understanding of NDD and improve the competitiveness of EU health professionals and scholars, providing the market with highly-skilled researchers and clinicians.
In doing so, we aim to explore the probabilistic relationships between multiple levels of analysis (e.g. genetics, neural systems, cognition, environmental influences) and different remedial outcomes, cutting across clinical diagnostic boundaries, for informing research on mental health. Theoretical and predictive models adhering to the RDoC may help to address the considerable heterogeneity and comorbidity in NDD. Also, training a new generation of researchers within this framework is expected to improve the understanding of brain and behavior, enhance diagnosis and clinical formulation, develop personalized treatments, support prevention of NDD, and eliminate the disparities in underserved populations, including gender disparities. To attain this objective, our theoretical framework addresses (a) protective and risk factors, (b) multiple levels of analysis (genetic and environmental, neural, cognitive, and behavioral), (c) bidirectional connections between constructs within each level, and (d) bidirectional relationships between levels, accounting for interactions between protective and risk factors. As a result, ESRs are expected to gain significant skills in statistical and experimental methods, data science, neuroimaging, Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs), the link between clinical science and clinical practice, and other transferable skills, enabling the ESR to excel in a number of future scientific areas and/or continue within areas of industry relevant to biomedical data and data science.
This multi-disciplinary and cross-sectorial training program for understanding NDDs, to our knowledge, currently does not exist in Europe.
1 Insel, Cuthbert et al. (2010). Research Domain Criteria (RDoC): Toward a new classification for research on mental disorders. Am J Psychi 167, 748 -751.
