Transdiagnostic computations of uncertainty: towards a new lens on intolerance of uncertainty

• Published in: Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews 2023-05, Vol.148, p.105123-105123, Article 105123
• Main Authors: Sandhu, Timothy R., Xiao, Bowen, Lawson, Rebecca P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Affect; Anxiety - psychology; Computational modelling; Humans; Individuality; Intolerance of uncertainty; Mental Health; Misestimation of uncertainty; Personality; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 0149-7634; 1873-7528
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105123

People radically differ in how they cope with uncertainty. Clinical researchers describe a dispositional characteristic known as “intolerance of uncertainty”, a tendency to find uncertainty aversive, reported to be elevated across psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions. Concurrently, recent research in computational psychiatry has leveraged theoretical work to characterise individual differences in uncertainty processing. Under this framework, differences in how people estimate different forms of uncertainty can contribute to mental health difficulties. In this review, we briefly outline the concept of intolerance of uncertainty within its clinical context, and we argue that the mechanisms underlying this construct may be further elucidated through modelling how individuals make inferences about uncertainty. We will review the evidence linking psychopathology to different computationally specified forms of uncertainty and consider how these findings might suggest distinct mechanistic routes towards intolerance of uncertainty. We also discuss the implications of this computational approach for behavioural and pharmacological interventions, as well as the importance of different cognitive domains and subjective experiences in studying uncertainty processing. •Intolerance of uncertainty is a transdiagnostic factor across psychopathology.•Computational models offer holistic insight into how people process uncertainty.•Misestimating different forms of uncertainty contributes to psychopathology.•More work is needed to confirm the explanatory scope of misestimating uncertainty.