Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience in Disinhibitory Psychopathology: Summary and Integration

The chapters in this section address a large group of behaviors including psychopathological syndromes, trait dimensions, and a variety of specific deficits. Examples perspective taking. Historically, disinhibitory behavior has been ascribed to willful misbehavior and debate continues with respect to the legitimacy of regarding disinhibitory syndromes as psychopathology For many, establishing a link between biologically-based dysfunction and maladaptive behavior is the sine qua non of psychopathology (Wakefield, 1992). Progress in cognitive and affective neuroscience has made it increasingly compelling to posit psychobiological mechanisms for disinhibitory psychopathology. Such research may eventually clarify the reasons why some individuals chronically engage in behavior that has negative consequences for themselves and others. It may also clarify the processes associated with disinhibited behavior that reflect primarily situational influences as opposed to trait characteristics. The present chapters advance an assortment of potential psychobiological mechanisms and provide a foundation for such progress. From this perspective, the field of disinhibitory psychopathology appears poised for rapid progress. Rather than a lack of plausible psychobiological models, the challenge presented by the present chapters concerns differentiating the various psychobiological mechanisms, clarifying their relation to specific forms of disinhibitory psychopathology, and identifying methods for evaluating the putative associations. In order to organize the rapidly growing evidence, contrast the proposed mechanisms, and generate alternative hypotheses regarding their significance for diverse forms of disinhibitory psychopathology, it is useful to adopt a common conceptual framework for the various syndromes and explanatory mechanisms. Toward this end, we describe a general model of self-regulation that is, at once, broad enough to accommodate diverse symptoms and mechanisms and specific enough to distinguish among them. After outlining the conceptual framework, we review the psychobiological mechanisms presented in this section and discuss their implications for disinhibitory psychopathology. Moreover, we discuss the implications of this integration for addressing past problems and advancing future research. Integrative framework In this segment, we present a broad framework for conceptualizing the core features of disinhibitory psychopathology. integrating construct of the framework involves self-regulation which the authors define as the context-appropriate balance of attention to dominant and non-dominant cues (CABA). Though often categorized as a cognitive variable, we view attention as a " top-down " self-regulatory mechanism capable of enhancing appropriate cognitions, emotions, or behaviors and suppressing inappropriate cognitions, emotions, or behaviors. While recognizing that there are important differences between the regulation of emotion, cognition, and behavior, our view is that selective attention represents a common …