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The subjects of digital psychiatry – Somatosphere

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Imagine a room full of research assistants at a North American university listening to the audio recorded speech of human research subjects diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Though they will never meet or interact with these individuals, the research assistants must carefully quantify the affective dips, sighs, and texture of the subjects’ speech. Number by number, day by day, their clickwork will form the algorithmic infrastructure that – the study’s Principal Investigators hope – will eventually power a smartphone application for predicting mania or depression based on vocal qualities. Meanwhile, in rural Nepal, a young mother is searching for the “beacon” after putting oil on her baby. The small sensing device gets tagged on to her child’s clothes to measure the distance between her and the baby throughout the day. Too much prolonged distance may indicate neglect, too little a lack of self-care opportunities for the mother; both could be problematic for her recovery from maternal dep

This article is part of the following series: Tracking Digital Psy Giorgia Lupi/Stefanie Posavec (2014), MOMA “Dear Data, Week 8, A Week of Phone Addiction” All authors contributed equally to this essay Imagine a room full of research assistants at a North American university listening to the audio recorded speech of human research subjects diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Though they will never meet or interact with these individuals, the research assistants must carefully quantify the affective dips, sighs, and texture of the subjects’ speech. Number by number, day by day, their…

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