The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) has been developed as a multilevel approach to study neurocognitive impairments in psychiatry. Considering the high prevalence and the functional impairment associated with disruptive mood dysregulation disorders (DMMD) in youths, a better understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying such emotional difficulties could help guide therapeutics.

So far, three key difficulties in the socio-emotional neurocognitive process have been documented in youths with DMDD:

– a deficit in the recognition of facial emotions has been found (systems for social process/social communication construct). Functional imagery has shown that such impairment is associated with a hypoactivity of limbic neural structures, especially the amygdala. Such findings are in line with those found in adults with depressive episodes;

– poor flexibility during cognitive tasks (cognitive systems/cognitive effortful control construct). In particular, these youths score poorly in neuropsychological tasks associated with response reversal paradigm measuring the capacity to change cognitive strategy when the rules of the game change implicitly. These results partly explain the difficulties facing DMDD youths in a frustrating context;

– higher level of emotional arousal. Such youths would present specific impairments in the initial stages of attention; reflected by lower N1 event-related potential amplitude during Posner affective tasks.

Ongoing studies are being conducted to explore other RDoC domains such as abnormalities in circadian rhythms; in metacognition and perspective-taking tasks; and in the non-facial communication process (such as prosody or postural expressions). A computational model of interactive behaviors is a promising field to study difficulties of DMDD youths in regulating moods during social interaction.