In this episode, I catch up with Dr Taylor A. Braund to hear about his research into digital phenotyping. In particular, we discuss the link between mental health symptoms and keystroke metadata from smartphones.

Dr Taylor A. Braund is a Research Fellow at Black Dog Institute and UNSW School of Clinical Medicine, Australia. To see more of Taylor’s work, you can reach out on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Research mentioned in this episode

Braund, T.A. (2024). The continued hype and hope of digital phenotyping. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3(448).

Braund, T. A., O’Dea, B., Bal, D., Maston, K., Larsen, M., Werner-Seidler, A., Tillman, G., & Christensen, H. (2023). Associations between smartphone keystroke metadata and mental health symptoms in adolescents: Findings from the Future Proofing Study. JMIR Mental Health, 10(e44986).

Braund, T. A., Zin, M. T., Boonstra, T. W., Wong, Q. J. J., Larsen, M. E., Christensen, H., Tillman, G., O’Dea, B. (2022). Smartphone sensor data for identifying and monitoring symptoms of mood disorders: A longitudinal observational study. JMIR Mental Health, 9(5):e35549

O’Dea, B., Braund, T. A., Batterham, P. J., Larsen, M. E., Glozier, N., & Whitton, A. E. (2024). Reading between the lines: Identifying the linguistic markers of Anhedonia for the stratification of depression. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (Paper)

Seminal digital phenotyping papers

Huckvale, K., Venkatesh, S., & Christensen, H. (2019). Toward clinical digital phenotyping: A timely opportunity to consider purpose, quality, and safety. npj Digital Medicine, 2(88).

Insel, T. R. (2017). Digital phenotyping: Technology for a new science of behavior. JAMA, 318(13):1215–1216.

Torous, J., Kiang, M. V., Lorme, J., & Onnela, J. P. (2016). New tools for new research in psychiatry: A scalable and customizable platform to empower data driven smartphone research. JMIR Mental Health, 3(2):e16.

Some available digital phenotyping platforms

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/onnela-lab/beiwe-research-platform/

https://www.digitalpsych.org/lamp.html

https://www.biaffect.com/

Cite this episode

MacDonald, J. B. & Braund, T. A. (2024, Oct 1). Digital phenotyping: Using smartphone metadata to predict mental health symptoms (No. 22) [Audio podcast episode]. In Psych Attack. www.psychattack.com

Transcript
The transcript for this episode was developed using transcription software. There may be some errors in the content as I do not have capacity to review for accuracy.

Acknowledgements

Psych Attack is created and hosted by Dr Jasmine B. MacDonald. The video and audio for this episode was edited by Morgan McRae. Special thanks to Dr Taylor A. Braund for sharing your time and expertise. Please note that the views and opinions expressed by Taylor in this episode are his own and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policy of his employer.

In this episode, I catch up with Dr Miiamaaria Kujala to hear about her research on human-dog relationships. Miiamaaria studies how humans understand dog communication, how dogs understand humans, and the factors affecting the interaction between the two species such as culture, human personality and dog behaviour.

We discuss:
- Her personal journey from philosophy to neuroscience and eventually to studying both ends of the leash
- The cultural differences in dog ownership between countries like Finland and Australia
- The impact of human personality traits on dog behaviour and the human-dog relationship
- How emotional closeness and perceived costs of dog ownership vary among different personalities
- The methods used to measure dog cognition and behaviour, including the fascinating "impossible task" experiment.

Dr. Miiamaaria Kujala is Academy Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology at University of Jyväskylä, Finland. To see more of Miiamaaria’s work you can access her research group’s web page.

Papers mentioned in this episode

Bender, Y., Bräuer, J., & Schweinberger, S. R. (2023). What makes a good dog-owner team? – A systematic review about compatibility in personality and attachment. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 260. (Behind a pay wall)

Dwyer, F., Bennett, P. C., & Coleman, G. J. (2006). Development of the Monash Dog Owner Relationship Scale (MDORS). Anthrozoös, 19(3), 243-256. (Behind a pay wall)

Kujala, M. V., Imponen, N., Pirkkala, A., Silfverberg, T., Parviainen, T., Tiira, K., & Kiuru, N. (2023). Modulation of dog-owner relationship and dog social and cognitive behavior by owner temperament and dog breed group. Scientific reports, 13(1), 14739. (Open access!)

Cite this episode

MacDonald, J. B. & Kujala, M. V. (2024, September 2). Factors that affect human-dog relationships (No. 21) [Audio podcast episode]. In Psych Attack. www.psychattack.com

Transcript
The transcript for this episode was developed using transcription software. There may be some errors in the content as I do not have capacity to review for accuracy.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dr Miiamaaria Kujala for sharing your time and expertise. Psych Attack is created and hosted by Dr Jasmine B. MacDonald. The audio for this episode was edited by Morgan McRae.

In this episode, I catch up with Dr Jade McEwen to hear about her professional and personal experiences of self-care, the benefits of being unapologetically self-promoting, and working out how to be heard in order to get the support you need.

Dr Jade McEwen is Assistant Director of Research, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, Australia. To see more of Jade’s work, you can reach out on LinkedIn or send her an email.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Hough, A., & McEwen, J. (2024). Building quality and safeguarding into disability service provision. In: Bigby, C., Hough, A. (eds) Disability Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6143-6_14

The whole book that Jade’s chapter comes from is open access. Thank you to the authors (and their respective institutions) for making this happen!

Cite this episode

MacDonald, J. B., & McEwen, J. (2024, Aug 1). Self-advocacy and professional relationships (No. 20) [Audio podcast episode]. In Psych Attack. www.psychattack.com

Transcript
The transcript for this episode was developed using transcription software. There may be some errors in the content as I do not have capacity to review for accuracy.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dr Jade McEwen for sharing your time and expertise. Psych Attack is created and hosted by Dr Jasmine B. MacDonald. The audio for this episode was edited by Morgan McRae.