Intrusive Thinking

Description
Structure

Intrusive Thinking across Neuropsychiatric Disorders

June 14–19, 2019

Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Proposed by: Peter W. Kalivas and Martin P. Paulus

Program Advisory Committee

Katerina Fotopoulou, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, U.K.
Rita Z. Goldstein, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, U.S.A.
Peter W. Kalivas, Department of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29464, U.S.A
Julia R. Lupp, Ernst Strüngmann Forum, Frankfurt, Germany
Martin P. Paulus, Laureate Institute for Brain Research, Tulsa, OK 74136-3326, U.S.A.
Trevor W. Robbins, Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB, U.K.
Peter Tse, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, U.S.A.

Background

Developing new treatments for neuropsychiatric diseases is a source of extreme frustration in both academic medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. Out of this a new approach has emerged based on the idea that symptoms driven by specific brain circuits are the best sources of new drug targets. By targeting individual symptoms, specific endophenotypes (symptoms that can be reliably measured and quantified) are studied, which may be shared across neuropsychiatric disorders. Circuit-based endophenotypes can be studied in animal models while full human psychiatric disorders cannot. Intrusive thinking is an exemplar endophenotype—one manifested in multiple neuropsychiatric disorders, all of which broadly impact medicine and society.

Defined as the sudden intrusion of unwanted or unwillful thoughts, images, or impulses, intrusive thinking is a frequent and natural occurrence within our stream of consciousness (Clark and Purdon 1995). An inability to control intrusive thinking can lead to a number of behavioral pathologies, including addiction disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD). Importantly, the neural circuitry and cell biology in addiction models of intrusive thinking have been extensively characterized, and drugs targeting addictive drug-induced molecular changes within this circuitry have been shown to decrease intrusive thinking and some associated psychiatric disorders, including addiction, OCD, PTSD, and major depression. Thus, intrusive thinking is at the forefront of how the medical community will use endophenotypes to develop novel treatments and define psychiatric disorders.

There is a common perception that improving neuropsychiatric symptoms is a function of willpower. For instance, it is commonly believed that if patients exert sufficient willpower, they should be able to stop using drugs. Since intrusive thinking is defined as an inability to control one's thoughts and corresponding actions, it can be viewed as a failure of willpower. As such, the neurobiology of intrusive thinking speaks directly to the neurobiology of willpower. In addition to identifying how endophenotypes can best be used in neuropsychiatry, this Forum will work to expand the concept of an endophenotype: moving beyond its interpretation as a mechanism for developing novel medical treatments, to being an approach for how basic neurobiology can inform and impact societal interpretations of abnormal behavior.

Using intrusive thinking as an exemplar endophenotype, this Forum will explore how basic neurobiological/molecular dysfunctions revealed by the endophenotype approach can advance the discovery of neuropsychiatric treatments and lead to a broadening of social perspectives on psychiatric disorders. This core issue needs to be addressed to validate (or not) the use of endophenotypes as a strategy for developing new treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders and to determine whether the endophenotype construct can be sociologically extended to influence social norms. Answering this fundamental question speaks not only to a strategy for developing clinical cures, but to basic sociological and philosophical constructs of human behavior.

This Forum is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

The German Research Foundation

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Goals for the Forum

To explore the mechanisms of intrusive thinking across multiple levels of analysis: cells, circuits, and psychological processes.
To examine the role of intrusive thinking as a core symptom across psychiatric disorders.
To identify promising interventions for treating intrusive thinking.
To consider societal and philosophical implications of intrusive thinking.

Group 1:Neural Mechanisms

What are the circuits that mediate extinction and intrusive thinking?
What is the state-of-the-art toolbox for how circuits mediate behavior?
What types of animal models can inform intrusive thinking?

Group 2: Interventions and Implications

What is the relationship between free will and intrusive thinking?
Is addiction a breakdown of free will?
What does 21st century neurobiology of free will look like?
Can intrusive thinking be a marker for addiction severity?
Can the process of translating intrusive thinking into treatments for neuropsychiatric diseases be developed into a template for progress in developing other endophenotypes for treating neuropsychiatric disorders?

Group 3: Neuropsychological Mechanisms of Intrusive Thinking

Current psychiatric perspectives on intrusive thinking
How can intrusive thinking be conceptualized at the level of psychological mechanisms?
How can intrusive thinking be measured in the lab and studied in the context of brain mechanisms?

Ernst Strüngmann Forum