A transdiagnostic network analysis of motivation and pleasure, expressivity and social functioning

Negative symptoms, comprising the motivation and pleasure (MAP) factor and the expressivity (EXP) factor, are key determinants of social functioning in schizophrenia (SCZ). Although negative symptoms are also found in major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD), it remains unclear whether the two factors would have different impacts on social functioning from a transdiagnostic perspective. Here we adopt network analysis to examine the inter-relationship pattern between the MAP and EXP factors, social functioning and other clinical characteristics in 192 patients with SCZ, 67 patients with BD and 92 patients with MDD. The results show that the MAP factor is the central node in the transdiagnostic network at symptom-domain and symptom-item levels. The MAP factor is closely connected to social functioning and makes a greater contribution to the variance explained for social functioning. These findings support that the MAP factor is the core symptom in determining social functioning across different psychiatric disorders.