RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Fusing Mobile Phone Sensing and Brain Imaging to Assess Depression in College Students: A Proof-of-Concept study
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 276568
DO 10.1101/276568
A1 Jeremy F. Huckins
A1 Alex W. daSilva
A1 Rui Wang
A1 Weichen Wang
A1 Elin L. Hedlund
A1 Eilis I. Murphy
A1 Richard B. Lopez
A1 Courtney Rogers
A1 Paul E. Holtzheimer
A1 William M. Kelley
A1 Todd F. Heatherton
A1 Andrew T. Campbell
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/05/276568.abstract
AB As smartphone usage has become increasingly prevalent in our society, so have rates of depression, particularly among young adults. Individual differences in smartphone usage patterns have been shown to reflect individual differences in underlying affective processes such as depression (Wang et al., in press), where depressive symptoms and duration of phone usage were previously linked. In the current study, we identified a positive relationship between smartphone screen time (e.g. phone unlock duration) and resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between the subgenual cingulate cortex (sgCC), a brain region implicated in depression and antidepressant treatment response, and regions of the ventromedial/orbitofrontal cortex, such that increased phone usage was related to stronger connectivity between these regions. We then used this cluster to constrain subsequent analyses looking at depressive symptoms in the same cohort and observed replication in a separate cohort. We believe the data and analyses presented here provide proof-of-concept analyses and a first step in combining functional brain activity and smartphone usage patterns to better understand issues related to mental health. Smartphones are a prevalent part of modern life and show promise in being a tool for mental health diagnostics and neuroscience research.