depression

Feeling kind of blue? This digital avatar can tell

It's nice to think each of us is entirely unique, a one-of-a-kind aggregate of life experiences colliding with genes that set us apart from everyone else. And while this is true to an extent, it's also true that certain telltale blueprints exist for us, all the way down to the way we move our faces if we are, say, depressed.

So researchers at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies are developing a Kinect-driven avatar they call SimSensei to track and analyze in real time a person's facial movements, body posture, linguistic patterns, acoustics, and behaviors such as fidgeting which, taken together, signal psychological distress.… Read more

Seniors who play video games less likely to be depressed

New research out of North Carolina State University suggests a link between seniors who play video games and a healthier sense of well-being.

As reported this week in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, researchers surveyed 140 people ages 63 and older (the group's average age was 77) and placed them into one of three categories: regular gamers (at least once a week), occasional gamers (less than once a week), and non-gamers.

It turns out that those who were regular or occasional gamers reported higher levels of well-being and social functioning, while non-gamers reported higher levels of depression and … Read more

uBiome project to sequence the bacteria that live on us

Oxford University Ph.D. student Jessica Richman, who today finished raising some $350,000 from more than 2,500 people wanting to take part in the uBiome project, isn't shying away from reality: "Yes, we are going to be sampling people's poo," she told the Guardian this week.

And for the squeamish, she offered an asterisk: "You'll only have to wipe it on the toilet paper."

The uBiome project is a "citizen science" effort to sequence the genomes of the trillions of bacteria that colonize our bodies and likely play pivotal … Read more

The 404 1,076: Where you don't know you're beautiful (podcast)

Hope you're sitting down for this: Jeff actually has positive words about a movie he saw this weekend! Without giving away the surprise, suffice it to say that Jeff's complaints about the lack of creativity in film and his disgust with the movie-going experience disappeared for two hours on Friday.

In advance of Microsoft's mysterious press event today, we'll speculate what's in store for the software giant and how it could fit into the 56-page road map document that leaked over the weekend.… Read more

Internet usage patterns may signal depression, study finds

The amount and type of online activity Internet users exhibit may be indicators of depression, findings a group of researchers hopes will lead to software tools to help identify depressive behavior.

People who showed symptoms of depression tended to use the Internet differently than those who didn't show signs of depression, researchers said in a New York Times opinion piece today. Some of that behavior included obsessively checking e-mail, watching lots of videos, and switching frequently among multiple apps, according to a new study by researchers from the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

The researchers asked 216 college … Read more

Can a smartphone sense depression?

New smartphone technology is in the works that should be able to tell whether a person is depressed.

The idea behind Mobilyze--under development by researchers at Northwestern University--is to create a virtual therapist to monitor a person's activity over several days and then make a mood assessment.

"We're trying to develop individual algorithms for each user that can determine specific states," lead researcher and psychologist David Mohr said in an interview on WBBM radio in Chicago.

These algorithms would include people's location, activity, social context, what they're doing, and their mood, in order … Read more

Track hurricanes on your phone or online

Every year as summer is winding to a close, hurricane season ramps up here in the United States. Though meteorologists officially describe hurricane season as being from June 1 to November 30, they admit that those are not magic dates and that the bulk of severe weather occurs between August and October. Right now in late August, Hurricane Irene is headed toward North Carolina and is expected to travel northward into New England. If you live in these areas or want to track the storm, there are several Web sites as well as iOS and Android apps that give you … Read more

'Problematic Internet usage' more common than asthma

Two recently published studies out of Seattle Children's Research Institute indicate that certain levels of media usage can lead to depression in college students as well as disrupt sleep patterns in preschool children.

Not exactly earth-shattering.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the researchers found in the first study that out of the 224 college students who took the Internet Addiction Test, only 9 of them (4 percent) scored in the "occasional problem" or "addicted" range.

To put what sounds like a small number in perspective, the researchers say that Internet over-usage is now more prevalent than asthma.… Read more

GE, Mayo Clinic to develop prototype MRI brain scanner

GE and Mayo Clinic announce today that they are the recipients of a five-year, $5.7 million research grant to study and develop a dedicated MRI brain scanner to image a wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders, including stroke, depression, and autism.

"A smaller, lighter, dedicated head-only MRI system will have a huge positive impact on the field of psychiatry," said Steve Williams, head of the Department of Neuroimaging at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, in a news release. "During the past decade, brain imaging research has dramatically improved our understanding of mental … Read more