Measuring Interoception: the CARdiac Elevation Detection Task (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Ponzo ◽  
Davide Morelli ◽  
Chatrin Suksasilp ◽  
Massimo Cairo ◽  
David Plans

UNSTRUCTURED Interoception has increasingly been the focus of psychiatric research, due to its hypothesised role in mental health. Existing interoceptive tasks are often burdensome and require specialised equipment, limiting their usage in vulnerable populations. We report on the development of the CARdiac Elevation Detection (CARED) task. Participants’ heart rate is recorded by a wearable device connected to a mobile application. Notifications are sent to participants’ mobile throughout the day over a period of 4 weeks. Participants are asked to state whether their heart rate is higher than usual, rate their confidence and describe the activity they were involved in when the notification occurred. Data (N=30) revealed that ⅓ of the sample was classified as interoceptive and that participants presented overall good insight into their interoceptive abilities. Given its ease of administration and accessibility, the CARED task has the potential to be a significant asset for psychiatric and developmental research.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Ponzo ◽  
Davide Morelli ◽  
Chatrin Suksasilp ◽  
Massimo Cairo ◽  
David Plans

Interoception has increasingly been the focus of psychiatric research, due to its hypothesized role in mental health. Existing interoceptive tasks either suffer from important methodological limitations, impacting their validity, or are burdensome and require specialized equipment, which limits their usage in vulnerable populations. We report on the development of the CARdiac Elevation Detection (CARED) task. Participants’ heart rate is recorded by a wearable device connected to a mobile application. Notifications are sent to participants’ mobile throughout the day over a period of 4 weeks. Participants are asked to state whether their heart rate is higher than usual, rate their confidence and describe the activity they were involved in when the notification occurred. Data (N = 30) revealed that 1/3 of the sample was classified as interoceptive and that participants presented overall good insight into their interoceptive abilities. Given its ease of administration and accessibility, the CARED task has the potential to be a significant asset for psychiatric and developmental research.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Ponzo ◽  
Davide Morelli ◽  
Chatrin Suksasilp ◽  
Massimo Cairo ◽  
David Plans

Interoception, namely the perception of the body's internal states, has increasingly been the focus of psychiatric research, due to its hypothesised role in mental health disturbances. Nevertheless, existing tasks of interoception are often long, burdensome and require specialised equipment to be carried out, thus limiting the possibility of conducting studies in vulnerable populations. We report on the development and proof of concept testing of a novel interoceptive task, namely the CARdiac Elevation Detection (CARED) task. Participants’ heart rate is recorded by a wearable device connected to a mobile application. Notifications are sent to participants’ mobile based on an algorithm optimised to send at least 6 notifications per day at different heart rate values throughout the day, over a period of at least 4 weeks. Participants are asked to state whether their heart rate is higher than usual, rate how confident they are in their answer and provide a brief description of the activity they were involved in when the notification occurred. Data from 30 participants revealed that approximately ⅓ of the sample was classified as being interoceptive (in line with previous findings) and that participants presented overall good insight into their interoceptive abilities. Given its ease of administration and accessibility, the CARED task has the potential to be a significant asset for psychiatric and developmental research.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  

Assistive mobile technologies are highly demanded in order to reduce care givers effort with low cost/free programs. In this context, and due to the aging/ mental health disorders, memory loss and the change in the interaction between cognitive disability and mental health conditions, using mobile mental health assistive applications would improve the employees’ performance. Hence, assistive mobile technology can be used to support people with mental health conditions to stay in their jobs and improve their productivity, in addition to assist remembering daily activities, order and organize them according to place and emotions. Emotion detection based mobile technologies are recently considered a revolution in building assistive mobile applications. This article introduces a Bio-reminder mobile application that will remind the person with his/her tasks based on matching with their biometrics associated with the given task. Biometrics includes heart rate monitoring measured by biosensors. In this paper, the proposed mobile application uses Fitbit to measure heart rate, calories burned in addition to GPS to report the location


2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Lang ◽  
Lisa M. McTeague ◽  
Margaret M. Bradley

Abstract. Several decades of research are reviewed, assessing patterns of psychophysiological reactivity in anxiety patients responding to a fear/threat imagery challenge. Findings show substantive differences in these measures within principal diagnostic categories, questioning the reliability and categorical specificity of current diagnostic systems. Following a new research framework (US National Institute of Mental Health [NIMH], Research Domain Criteria [RDoC]; Cuthbert & Insel, 2013 ), dimensional patterns of physiological reactivity are explored in a large sample of anxiety and mood disorder patients. Patients’ responses (e.g., startle reflex, heart rate) during fear/threat imagery varied significantly with higher questionnaire measured “negative affect,” stress history, and overall life dysfunction – bio-marking disorder groups, independent of Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals (DSM). The review concludes with a description of new research, currently underway, exploring brain function indices (structure activation, circuit connectivity) as potential biological classifiers (collectively with the reflex physiology) of anxiety and mood pathology.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Kalfic ◽  
Glenn Mitchell ◽  
Lezanne Ooi ◽  
Sibylle Schwab ◽  
Natalie Matosin

The growing number of refugees and asylum seekers are one of the most significant global challenges of this generation. We are currently witnessing the highest level of displacement in history, with over 65 million displaced people in the world. Refugees and asylum seekers are at higher risk to develop mental illness due to their trauma and chronic stress exposures, and particularly post-migration stressors. Yet global and Australian psychiatric research in this area is greatly lacking, particularly with respect to our understanding of the molecular underpinnings of risk and resilience to mental illness in traumatised populations. In this Viewpoint, we explore the reasons behind the lack of refugee mental health research and use this context to propose new ways forward. We believe that scientific discovery performed with a multidisciplinary approach will provide the broad evidence-base required to improve refugee mental health. This will also allow us to work towards the removal of damaging policies that prolong and potentiate mental health deterioration among refugees and asylum seekers, which impacts not only on the individuals but also host countries’ social, economic and healthcare systems.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ellen Mackesy-Amiti ◽  
Lawrence J. Ouellet

Background. We examined correlates of past year suicidal thoughts and behavior (STB) and described past year treatment experiences among young people who inject drugs (PWID). Methods. Participants were 570 adults (18-25 years) who injected primarily heroin. Interviews were conducted at field stations operated by Community Outreach Intervention Projects in Chicago, Illinois (USA). Interviewers administered the Psychiatric Research Instrument for Substance and Mental Disorders. Substance use and mental disorders were based on DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. Past year STB was based on multiple questions. Results. Sixteen percent of men and 25% of women reported STB in the past year. In multivariable analysis, STB was associated with non-heterosexual orientation, foster care, and being raised by two parents. Primary major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, other anxiety disorders, and borderline personality disorder had independent effects on suicidality. Among those reporting past year STB (n=111), 83% ever received mental health treatment, while 44% did so in the past year. While 24% of respondents indicated that at least one treatment matched their needs very well, 30% reported treatment that did not match their needs at all. The most common reason for ending treatment was program completion (about 50%) while getting better was endorsed by about 25%. Nearly half reported ending treatment due to a bad experience, logistical issues, or expense. Conclusions. Young PWID are at high risk for suicidal behavior and their mental health treatment experiences often do not meet their needs. There is a pressing need for more integrated substance use and mental health treatment.


1994 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Lust

A  successful and justified multiannual afforestation programme requires a good  insight into the objectives and awareness of the constraints of the new  forests, a planning strategy and a thorough research on the missing aspects.      Socio-economic constraints mainly relate to social aspects of the farmers  involved, who must be assured of a viable income.     Therefore the new forest types and silvicultural systems should produce a  reasonable return, without neglecting however the global multiple use  objective.     Planning has to deal with specific goals, the area of new forests, the  location and size, accompanying measures and a time scale.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 3461
Author(s):  
Blake Anthony Hickey ◽  
Taryn Chalmers ◽  
Phillip Newton ◽  
Chin-Teng Lin ◽  
David Sibbritt ◽  
...  

Recently, there has been an increase in the production of devices to monitor mental health and stress as means for expediting detection, and subsequent management of these conditions. The objective of this review is to identify and critically appraise the most recent smart devices and wearable technologies used to identify depression, anxiety, and stress, and the physiological process(es) linked to their detection. The MEDLINE, CINAHL, Cochrane Central, and PsycINFO databases were used to identify studies which utilised smart devices and wearable technologies to detect or monitor anxiety, depression, or stress. The included articles that assessed stress and anxiety unanimously used heart rate variability (HRV) parameters for detection of anxiety and stress, with the latter better detected by HRV and electroencephalogram (EGG) together. Electrodermal activity was used in recent studies, with high accuracy for stress detection; however, with questionable reliability. Depression was found to be largely detected using specific EEG signatures; however, devices detecting depression using EEG are not currently available on the market. This systematic review highlights that average heart rate used by many commercially available smart devices is not as accurate in the detection of stress and anxiety compared with heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, and possibly respiratory rate.


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