Deanna Kaplan
Emory University, GA·Psychology·Early-career
Depression is common, but screening for it and tracking how patients respond to treatment usually depend on clinic visits and questionnaires. The way people speak, including tone, rhythm and pauses, may carry measurable signs of depression called speech-based biomarkers.
- Fields
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
depression
major depressive disorder
speech biomarkers
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2031
What they work on
- Optimize the Fabla smartphone voice-diary app for major depressive disorder screening using co-design methods with community participants, including older adults.
- Characterize speech-based biomarkers recorded through Fabla over 10 days in 150 adults with MDD and 150 healthy adults, and compare them with published norms.
- Evaluate, using machine learning, how well Fabla-collected speech features, such as paralinguistic voice qualities, predict a diagnosis of major depressive disorder.
More about the research
If these signs can be captured reliably on a smartphone, they could offer a cheap, minimally invasive way to screen for depression, monitor treatment and catch relapses.
Why it matters
People living with depression, and the clinicians who care for them, could benefit from a scalable smartphone tool that flags depression risk, tracks treatment response and identifies relapse from everyday speech. Validated voice biomarkers may offer a lower-cost and less invasive complement to standard clinical assessment.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
Northeastern University, MA·Psychology
Test whether mindfulness-based real-time fMRI neurofeedback engages its intended brain target by reducing hyperconnectivity within the default mode network, the circuit active during inward self-focused thought, in adolescents aged 13 to 18 with major depressive disorder.
Susan Schembre
Georgetown University, DC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Identify the foods that contribute the majority of saturated fat and added sugars in the American diet using recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data.
Manish Jha
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Neuroscience·Early-career
Identify patterns of resting-state functional connectivity linked to irritability, using 7 Tesla fMRI in 30 healthy adults and 60 adults with major depressive disorder.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
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