People with bipolar may be able to predict their next manic or depressive episode with help from a smart phone app, Melbourne researchers hope.
University of Melbourne researchers developed an app for participants which collects data on what people are doing including snatches of audio, digital vision and activity trackers.
"There has never been a better time to be a psychological scientist. We can now start to capture people's objective experiences in a real way," researcher Professor Simon Dennis said.
The data collected by the app is scrambled so researchers cannot know the content of conversations or emails but build a picture on a person's behaviour.
Associate Professor Amy Perfors said the app enabled researchers to delve into some deep questions.
"By knowing what an individual's actual experience is, we will be able to model how people interact, what makes them decide to talk to someone, what they decide to share with someone, what they learn from each other and what social structures lead to knowledge exchange," Professor Perfors said.
Because of the information gathered the app can be used to predict manic and depressive phases and the technology is also being used to understand how memory works.
