A review of physiological and behavioral monitoring with digital sensors for neuropsychiatric illnesses

Type Journal Article Author Erik Reinertsen Author Gari D. Clifford URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5995114/ Volume 39 Issue 5 Pages 05TR01 Publication Physiological measurement ISSN 0967-3334 Date 2018-5-15 Extra PMID: 29671754 PMCID: PMC5995114 Journal Abbr Physiol Meas DOI 10.1088/1361-6579/aabf64 Accessed 2022-03-18 17:00:02 Library Catalog PubMed Central Abstract Physiological, behavioral, and psychological changes associated with neuropsychiatric illness are reflected in several related signals, including actigraphy, location, word sentiment, voice tone, social activity, heart rate, and responses to standardized questionnaires. These signals can be passively monitored using sensors in smartphones, wearable accelerometers, Holter monitors, and multimodal sensing approaches that fuse multiple data types. Connection of these devices to the internet has made large scale studies feasible and is enabling a revolution in neuropsychiatric monitoring. Currently, evaluation and diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disorders relies on clinical visits, which are infrequent and out of the context of a patient’s home environment. Moreover, the demand for clinical care far exceeds the supply of providers. The growing prevalence of context-aware and physiologically relevant digital sensors in consumer technology could help address these challenges, enable objective indexing of patient severity, and inform rapid adjustment of treatment in real-time. Here we review recent studies utilizing such sensors in the context of neuropsychiatric illnesses including stress and depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.