Correction: Growing Up Digital-Smartphone Psychiatry story

Dr. Alex Leow, associate professor of psychiatry and bioengineering in the UIC College of Medicine, is quoted in an Associated Press article on apps that can help monitor or detect depression. Leow, along with several fellow developers including Peter Nelson, dean of the UIC College of Engineering, created BiAffect, an app that unobtrusively monitors keyboard dynamics metadata, such as typing speed and rhythm, mistakes in texts, and the use of backspace and auto-correct. The metadata, but not the content of the text, is analyzed using an artificial intelligence-based machine learning approach to identify digital biomarkers of manic and depressive episodes in people with bipolar disorder. “We are tracking the equivalent of a heartbeat for the human brain,” said Leow.