{"id":554513,"date":"2026-07-22T19:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T19:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/554513\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T19:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T19:18:10","slug":"motor-abnormalities-predict-mental-illness-in-both-general-and-specific-symptoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/554513\/","title":{"rendered":"Motor Abnormalities Predict Mental Illness in Both General and Specific Symptoms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Motor issues\u2014such as coordination problems, motor slowing, or sudden, uncontrolled movements\u2014have been recognized as signs of psychological disorders since the 1800s. How they map to\u00a0mental health<\/a>\u00a0conditions, however, remains unknown.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen things have been observed since really early ideas of disorders, that means something,\u201d said Jessica Fattal, a graduate student in Vijay Mittal\u2019s lab at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n

Motor abnormalities have been best described in psychosis but are also observed in\u00a0depression<\/a>, bipolar disorder,\u00a0attention-deficit\/hyperactivity disorder<\/a>,\u00a0schizophrenia<\/a>, and\u00a0autism spectrum disorder<\/a>. Motor function is easy to measure, well described in terms of circuitry, developmentally relevant, and vital for navigating the world, from daily functioning to social interactions.<\/p>\n

Understanding how motor abnormalities relate to psychological disorders may help provide insight into mechanisms underlying mental health issues, disease progression, and potential treatments. However, whether motor symptoms signal risk of mental illness in general or point to a specific disorder is unclear.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it that motor symptoms are just kind of broadly related to any psychopathology and you can\u2019t really differentiate at all between them? Or is it that maybe, for example, in psychosis, they\u2019re really important, but in anxiety, they\u2019re not related at all?\u201d asked Fattal.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a02026\u00a0Clinical Psychological Science\u00a0paper<\/a>, Fattal addressed these questions using the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiToP), which aims to view mental illnesses on a spectrum rather than as discrete diseases. Broader dimensions (such as psychosis and internalizing) split into related issues (like dissociation, fear, and distress), which may break down further into specific symptoms. HiToP is an ideal framework to characterize psychopathology transdiagnostically and help uncover overlap in clinical symptoms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a model that\u2019s able to ask questions about the specificity of different symptom clusters in this hierarchical structure, but it\u2019s also a model that allows symptoms to relate to things differently,\u201d said Fattal. \u201cWe\u2019re able to ask these questions both across and within [disorders], in a way that not a lot of other systems are quite as well powered or well constructed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Participants in Fattal\u2019s study did not have previously reported mental health diagnoses. Nearly 3,500 filled out questionnaires regarding psychotic-like experiences, depression,\u00a0anxiety<\/a>, mania, dissociation, and substance abuse, as well as self-reported motor symptoms, such as early developmental delays, uncontrolled movements, coordination issues, and physical activity levels.<\/p>\n

Fattal ran models to see which structure best fit movement and psychological symptoms. If motor symptoms are a marker of general risk for mental illness, motor symptoms would relate to broad dimensions without clearly differentiating between psychological symptom domains, and the 1-factor model would outperform the other factor structures. On the other hand, if motor symptoms predict specific psychological symptoms, they would relate to specific symptom dimensions, and the 10-factor model would fit best.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more symptom clustery models did better across the board,\u201d said Fattal. \u201cIt seemed like between five and eight factors worked the best, which means there\u2019s some value to differentiating between symptoms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall motor problems, dyskinesia (sudden, uncontrolled movements), and coordination abnormalities were all positively related to psychological symptom domains such as distress, dissociation, and fear, suggesting that greater motor abnormalities are related to greater psychopathology. Physical activity was positively related to mania and substance abuse and negatively related to detachment, fear, and distress.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The psychological symptoms studied] all are related to more motor symptoms, but maybe there\u2019s just differentiation in the quantity at which they\u2019re associated with them,\u201d said Fattal. \u201cFor some motor symptoms like physical activity, there\u2019s some differentiation in direction as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work suggests motor abnormalities are both predictors of mental health illness in general and predictors of more specific disorders, such as psychosis and depression.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt supports both theories,\u201d said Fattal, noting that although it\u2019s frustrating to not have a clear answer, the finding does fit with existing literature. \u201cSo many different domains of psychological functioning have been related to motor symptoms, but we also know that it\u2019s really important in certain disorders like psychosis. Those feel kind of contradictory, but it was exciting in this study that we were able to find that maybe they\u2019re not so contradictory, but it\u2019s a little bit more of a complicated picture than we can get in broad strokes.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she believes the research justifies thinking transdiagnostically and more intentionally integrating motor symptoms into HiToP.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big takeaway is that we should keep thinking about motor signs,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need more research and to continue thinking practically about how we can integrate these things into practice and into helping people with serious mental illness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reference<\/p>\n

Fattal, J., Ellman, L., Schiffman, J., Hirjak, D., Parmacek, S., Cowan, H., & Mittal, V. (2026). Motor abnormalities and HiToP: Incorporating a psychomotor perspective into a hierarchical dimensional symptom framework.\u00a0Clinical Psychological Science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Motor issues\u2014such as coordination problems, motor slowing, or sudden, uncontrolled movements\u2014have been recognized as signs of psychological disorders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[82613,163,85,46,251643,983],"class_list":["post-554513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-association-for-psychological-science","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-motor-coordinationmental-illnesshitop","tag-newswise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}