RDoC Mechanisms Underlying Bodily Symptoms in Psychiatry: A Scoping Review

Abstract

: Somatic or bodily symptoms are shared among various psychiatric disorders. Across the mood, anxious, dissociative and psychotic spectra, common and perhaps specific mechanisms for these debilitating symptoms need to be clarified. We propose here a scoping review of studies published until May 2025 focusing on primary research in adult populations about bodily symptoms, psychiatric disorders, and neurobiological mechanisms connecting them, based on the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) matrix. Our review follows the PRISMA-ScR Checklist and included 73 articles. Studies focusing solely on psychosomatic disorders were excluded. In the included studies, the most represented somatic symptoms were general symptoms such as pain or unspecific somatic symptoms, whereas anxiety and mood disorders accounted for the majority of psychiatric disorders. In terms of mechanistic links between somatic symptoms and psychiatric disorders, somatosensory perception and self-knowledge were the most studied RDoC subconstructs. When combined together, the most common triad associating somatic symptom, RDoC construct and psychiatric disorder was pain - perception - borderline personality disorder, occurring in 11 articles. This work also identifies knowledge gaps in the literature about mechanistic links between somatic symptoms and psychiatric disorders. For example, specific functional syndromes, dissociative disorders and interoception and their interactions are interesting concepts for future primary research studies. Alternatively, the most studied associations suggest topics to be covered by systematic reviews. Altogether, our results emphasize the need for more interdisciplinary research, taking advantage of recent advances in neuroscience that could help to uncover the complex mechanisms at play between psychological and bodily symptoms.