Depression is a severe burden on individuals and family members, and sadly it is quite prevalent with approximately 1 in 10 adults of the US reporting depression (http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/). Depression impacts many aspects of a persons physical and mental health, including not just the content of someones speech but also the vocal characteristics. With the help of adults who have depression, and those who do not, we seek to use state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques and vocal analysis to explore the brain mechanisms underlying voice changes in adults with depression.
We are currently seeking adults with depression local to the Boston, MA region for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) neuroimaging studies.
Regardless of your geographic location, we offer to all adults who have a passion for making contributions to this area an opportunity to participate in a mobile app voice collection. For less than 5 minutes a day, you can answer several short survey questions and record yourself speaking into your iOS device. As the study progresses, we hope to provide daily, objective feedback about your health using only short speech snippets.
This is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Institutional Review Board approved study.