918-587-6264
NAMI Tulsa
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contact
    • History
  • News
    • Bulletins
  • Education
  • Advocacy
  • Groups
  • FaithNet
  • Resource Library
  • Funding

Can Cellphone Use Predict Manic Episodes in Bipolar Disorder?

11/16/2016

Comments

 

A cellphone app that measures typing speed and spell-check overrides may be able to predict manic and depressive moods in people diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

phone-app-mood-swing

 

October 5, 2016, Newswise — A team led by two researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago has been chosen one of two finalists in a contest to use Apple’s ResearchKit, an open-source platform for creating apps, to develop a means to study mood disorders. As finalists, they will receive $100,000 to develop their app using Apple’s beta-testing platform, Test Flight. The eventual winner of the Mood Challenge, to be announced in 2017, will receive a final award of $200,000 to launch their app publicly.

Dr. Alex Leow, associate professor of psychiatry and bioengineering in the UIC College of Medicine, and Peter Nelson, professor of computer science and dean of the UIC College of Engineering, led a team that developed an app called BiAffect that unobtrusively monitors mobile device usage – including keyboard dynamics such as typing speed.

Earlier this year, Leow and her colleagues completed a pilot study of 30 participants that showed typing speed, frequency of texting, and use of social media correlated to depressive and manic episodes in people with bipolar disorder.

“During a manic episode, people with bipolar disorder exhibit some common behaviors, such as talking really, really fast,” Leow said. “It is thus natural that they also type on their phones very fast and tend to not check what they are typing.”

Spell-check usage may be a strong indicator of a manic episode, she said.
“Spell-checking requires the writer to pause and determine whether or not to ignore the suggested correction, or keep typing. People in the midst of a manic episode have reduced impulse control, and they tend to blow through the spellcheck alerts.”

Episodes of depression can also be identified by tracking cellphone usage, Leow said. During depressive episodes, typing a long message may become laborious, and messages tend to be shorter.

Bipolar disorder, which causes extreme mood swings between the emotional highs of manic episodes and low periods of depression, affects approximately 5.7 million adult Americans, or about 2.6 percent of those over 18, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Diagnosis relies on careful history-taking and examination.

“Cellphones are virtually ubiquitous,” said Nelson. “People are increasingly interacting through typed messages as opposed to old-fashioned phone calls and face-to-face conversations. BiAffect lets us examine these ubiquitous virtual-mental-health footprints or signatures of people suffering from mood disorders.”

Leow thinks that apps like BiAffect may prove useful in other fields of medicine. For example, researchers may be able to determine the efficacy of drugs in improving cognition using similarly unobtrusive technology.
“It’s easy to see how we can also use these kinds of apps to track symptoms associated with neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease,” she said.

Mladen Rasic, Faraz Hussain, Dr. Neil Smalheiser, Andrea Piscitello, Dr. Olusola Ajilore, Dr. Scott Langenecker, Philip Yu, Dr. John Zulueta and Bokai Cao of UIC, and Melvin McInnis and Kelly Ryan of the University of Michigan are also members of the BiAffect team.

 

Source



via bpHope – bp Magazine Community
http://ift.tt/2fWw1Fr

Comments
    Picture
     Today, NAMI Tulsa is heavily focused on education, support groups, public policy, training, and we have developed lasting relationships with many local, state, and national agencies for the betterment of the care of our mentally ill.

    The views expressed in these columns come from independent sources and are not necessarily the position of NAMI Tulsa. We encourage public engagement in the issues and seek good journalistic sources which advance the discussion for an improved society which fosters recovery from mental health challenges.

    President Steve Baker

    2017 President of NAMI Tulsa.
       .

    Picture
    NAMI Tulsa News
    Education

    Archives

    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    November 2014

    Categories

    All
    Faithnet
    Smoking

    RSS Feed

Learning

Education
News
Bulletins

Connecting

About Us
Support Groups
Advocacy

Support

Resource Library
Contact Us
Join NAMI

918-587-6264

Picture
© COPYRIGHT 2015. NAMI Tulsa ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
✕