PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

The digital therapist

Acoustic changes in speech of people with depression could be used to help monitor mental health

2014-10-31
(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON, D.C., October 31, 2014 -- Imagine this scenario: You've been feeling persistently blue lately, so you pull out your phone. Instead of asking Siri to tell you a joke, though, you open an app that records you simply talking about your day. A few hours later, your therapist sends you a message asking if you'd like to meet.

A program like this one that analyzes your speech and uses it to gain information about your mental health could soon be feasible, thanks in part to research from the University of Maryland showing that certain vocal features change as patients' feelings of depression worsen. The team behind the work will present their findings at the 168th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), held October 27-31 at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown Hotel.

The research is part of an interdisciplinary initiative at the University of Maryland to engineer patient-focused mental health monitoring systems. Rather than relying solely on patients' self-reports, these systems could monitor both physical and psychological symptoms of mental illness on a regular basis and provide both patients and their mental health providers with feedback about their status.

To conduct a quantitative experiment on the vocal characteristics of depression acoustician Carol Espy-Wilson and her colleagues repurposed a dataset collected from a 2007 study from an unaffiliated lab also investigating the relationship between depression and speech patterns. The earlier study assessed patients' depression levels each week using the Hamilton Depression Scale (a standard clinical evaluation tool to measure the severity of depression) and then recorded them speaking freely about their day.

The University of Maryland researchers used data from six patients who, over the six-week course of the previous study, had registered as depressed some weeks and not depressed other weeks. They compared these patients' Hamilton scores with their speech patterns each week, and found a correlation between depression and certain acoustic properties.

When patients' feelings of depression were worst, their speech tended to be breathier and slower. The team also found increases in jitter and shimmer, two measures of acoustic disturbance that measure the frequency and amplitude variation of the sound, respectively. Speech high in jitter and shimmer tends to sound hoarse or rough.

The researchers plan to repeat the study in a larger population, this time comparing speech patterns in individuals with no history of mental illness to those with depression to create an acoustic profile of depression-typical speech. A phone app could use this information to analyze patients' speech, identify acoustic signatures of depression and provide feedback and support.

Espy-Wilson hopes the interactive technology will appeal to teens and young adults, a particularly vulnerable group for mental health problems. "Their emotions are all over the place during this time, and that's when they're really at risk for depression. We have to reach out and figure out a way to help kids in that stage," she said.

Sometimes, patients might not recognize or be willing to admit that they are depressed. By receiving regular feedback based on acoustical and other measurements, they might learn to self-monitor their mental states and recognize when they should seek help. The technology could also promote communication between therapists and patients, allowing for continuous, responsive care in addition to regular in-person appointments.

The researchers acknowledge that developing an effective app requires a larger scope than just the underlying science—a challenge they plan to address. "We definitely need human factors to develop something that people will use," said Espy-Wilson. "There's a lot that has to go into making this a useful tool."

Presentation #5aSC12, "Effects of depression on speech," by Saurabh Sahu and Carol Espy-Wilson will be presented during a poster session on Friday, October 31, 2014, from 8:00 AM to noon in Marriott 5. The abstract can be found by searching for the presentation number here: https://asa2014fall.abstractcentral.com/planner.jsp

INFORMATION:

ABOUT THE MEETING The 168th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) will be held October 27-31, 2014, at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown Hotel. It will feature more than 1,100 presentations on sound and its applications in physics, engineering, and medicine. Reporters are invited to cover the meeting remotely or attend in person for free.

PRESS REGISTRATION We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact Jason Bardi (jbardi@aip.org, 240-535-4954), who can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

USEFUL LINKS Main meeting website: http://acousticalsociety.org/content/fall-2014-meeting Program and Abstracts: https://asa2014fall.abstractcentral.com/planner.jsp Live Webcast Oct. 29: http://www.aipwebcasting.com/webcast/registration/oct2014.php ASA's World Wide Press Room https://acoustics.org/?page_id=165

WORLD WIDE PRESS ROOM ASA's World Wide Press Room is being updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay-language papers, which are 300-1,200 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio, and video.

LIVE MEDIA WEBCAST A press briefing featuring a selection of newsworthy research will be webcast live from the conference the afternoon of Wednesday, October 29. A separate announcement, which includes topics and times, will be sent later this week. Register at: http://www.aipwebcasting.com/webcast/registration/oct2014.php

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world's leading journal on acoustics), Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. For more information about ASA, visit our website at http://www.acousticalsociety.org



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Report examines health care challenges for pregnant women enrolled in covered California

2014-10-31
WASHINGTON, DC (October 31, 2014) — A new report by Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University examines the challenge of maintaining enriched health care for pregnant women who are enrolled in Covered California and who are also eligible for Medi-Cal, which includes the Comprehensive Perinatal Services Program (CPSP). The CPSP, whose roots are in one of the nation's most successful programs ever developed for low-income pregnant women, makes enriched maternity care available to pregnant women facing elevated ...

NYU research: Majority of high school seniors favor more liberal marijuana policies

2014-10-31
The United States is undergoing a drastic change in marijuana policy. Two states legalized recreational use for adults in 2012, and next week, citizens of Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia will vote for or against legalization in their area. The majority of the public now favor legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana use, but there is a lack of research examining how marijuana use and demographic characteristics relate to positions toward specific marijuana policies. For example, is it primarily marijuana users who support legalization? There is a need to examine ...

ESA Frontiers November preview

2014-10-31
Connectivity cost calculations for conservation corridors Where are conservation dollars best invested to connect fragmented habitats? Sara Torrubia and colleagues test their model balancing restoration costs with connection quality on the threatened Washington ground squirrel in eastern Washington State. "Getting the most connectivity per conservation dollar," by Sara Torrubia, Brad H McRae, Joshua J Lawler, Sonia A Hall, Meghan Halabisky, Jesse Langdon, and Michael Case. Agricultural companions: co-planting partner crops improves yields Soy and cereals, rice and ...

Sexual fantasies: Are you normal?

2014-10-31
This news release is available in French. Hoping for sex with two women is common but fantasizing about golden showers is not. That's just one of the findings from a research project that scientifically defines sexual deviation for the first time ever. It was undertaken by researchers at Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal and Institut Philippe-Pinel de Montréal, affiliated with University of Montreal. Although many theories about deviant sexual fantasies incorporate the concept of atypical fantasies (paraphilias), the scientific literature ...

Synthetic lethality offers a new approach to kill tumor cells, explains Moffitt researcher

2014-10-31
TAMPA, Fla. (Oct. 30, 2014) – The scientific community has made significant strides in recent years in identifying important genetic contributors to malignancy and developing therapeutic agents that target altered genes and proteins. A recent approach to treat cancer called synthetic lethality takes advantage of genetic alterations in cancer cells that make them more susceptible to certain drugs. Alan F. List, MD, president and CEO of Moffitt Cancer Center, co-authored an article on synthetic lethality featured in the October 30 issue of the New England Journal of ...

Novel tinnitus therapy helps patients cope with phantom noise

Novel tinnitus therapy helps patients cope with phantom noise
2014-10-30
Patients with tinnitus hear phantom noise and are sometimes so bothered by the perceived ringing in their ears, they have difficulty concentrating. A new therapy does not lessen perception of the noise but appears to help patients cope better with it in their daily lives, according to new research. A pilot study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis showed that patients participating in computer-based cognitive training and taking a drug called d-cycloserine reported greater improvements in the ability to go about their daily lives than patients who ...

Himalayan Viagra fuels caterpillar fungus gold rush

Himalayan Viagra fuels caterpillar fungus gold rush
2014-10-30
Overwhelmed by speculators trying to cash-in on a prized medicinal fungus known as Himalayan Viagra, two isolated Tibetan communities have managed to do at the local level what world leaders often fail to do on a global scale — implement a successful system for the sustainable harvest of a precious natural resource, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis. "There's this mistaken notion that indigenous people are incapable of solving complicated problems on their own, but these communities show that people can be incredibly resourceful when ...

2014 Antarctic ozone hole holds steady

2014 Antarctic ozone hole holds steady
2014-10-30
The Antarctic ozone hole reached its annual peak size on Sept. 11, according to scientists from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The size of this year's hole was 24.1 million square kilometers (9.3 million square miles) — an area roughly the size of North America. The single-day maximum area was similar to that in 2013, which reached 24.0 million square kilometers (9.3 million square miles). The largest single-day ozone hole ever recorded by satellite was 29.9 million square kilometers (11.5 million square miles) on Sept. 9, 2000. ...

Hubble sees 'ghost light' from dead galaxies

Hubble sees ghost light from dead galaxies
2014-10-30
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has picked up the faint, ghostly glow of stars ejected from ancient galaxies that were gravitationally ripped apart several billion years ago. The mayhem happened 4 billion light-years away, inside an immense collection of nearly 500 galaxies nicknamed "Pandora's Cluster," also known as Abell 2744. The scattered stars are no longer bound to any one galaxy, and drift freely between galaxies in the cluster. By observing the light from the orphaned stars, Hubble astronomers have assembled forensic evidence that suggests as many as six galaxies ...

Unlocking the secrets of pulmonary hypertension

2014-10-30
A UAlberta team has discovered that a protein that plays a critical role in metabolism, the process by which the cell generates energy from foods, is important for the development of pulmonary hypertension, a deadly disease. Pulmonary hypertension is caused by the narrowing of the blood vessels in the lung, due to excessive growth of cells in the blood vessel wall. The cells grow in number until they obstruct the vessels, causing the heart to struggle pushing blood through the lungs to the point where the heart fails and the patient dies. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to go to their treat. Why do some animals learn to interact with the bell instead?

Call for Young Editorial Board members at Current Molecular Pharmacology

MSU team develops scalable climate solutions for agricultural carbon markets

Playing an instrument may protect against cognitive aging

UNM study finds link between Grand Canyon landslide and Meteor Crater impact

Ultra-hot Jupiter’s death spiral could reveal stellar secrets

You only get one brain! The best helmet material for protecting your noggin

Neurodegeneration and stroke after GLP-1RAs in diabetes and obesity

Pediatric COVID-19 hospitalization trends by race and ethnicity, 2020-2023

Research spotlight: New genetic roadmap offers insights into obesity and diabetes

Fred Hutch leads new Vanguard Study for Cancer Screening Research Network

‘Mismatched’ transplants now safe, effective for blood cancer patients, study finds

New research helps narrow down uncertainties in near-term precipitation projections for the Asian Water Tower

AI tool accurately detects tumor location on breast MRI

Researchers use OCT imaging to uncover how the fallopian tube transports embryos

PolyU secures RGC theme-based research scheme funding to develop cost-effective and sustainable Co-GenAI model

Van Andel Institute scientists develop technique for high-resolution single cell epigenetic analysis

The Lundquist Institute wins multi-year NIH grant exceeding $11 million to transform diagnosis and treatment of deadly mucormycosis

Review suggests ending adult boosters for tetanus, diphtheria

ESMT Berlin welcomes Rebecca Schaumberg to faculty

Blocking a little-known protein may offer new hope for devastating lung disease

Medieval medicine was smarter than you think – and weirdly similar to TikTok trends

FAU receives NIH grant to investigate amphetamine addiction

Realizing on-site carbon nanotube photo-thermoelectric imaging

Most of us love memes. But are they a form of comics?

Novel biosensor allows real-time monitoring of sucrose uptake in plants

Korea University researchers reveal revealing how WEE1 drives cancer resistance to immunotherapy

Pusan National University researchers develop breakthrough deep learning model that enhances handheld 3D medical imaging

SLAS Discovery and SLAS Technology demonstrate research impact with 2024 impact factors

Disease-causing bacteria can deal with stink as long as they get a meal

[Press-News.org] The digital therapist
Acoustic changes in speech of people with depression could be used to help monitor mental health