Study Combines Wearable Tech, Brain Imaging to Innovate Treatments for Paranoia

Researchers Aim to Understand How Environments, Experiences Trigger Disorder

A smartphone vibrates in someone’s pocket. The notification asks a simple question: “How are you feeling right now?” But the message isn’t from a clingy friend or pushy relative.

Instead, it’s part of a UMD study using mobile and wearable technology to help improve treatments for extreme paranoia while increasing our understanding of the disorder’s neurobiological building blocks and the environments in which it flourishes.

In casual language, “paranoia” often refers to mild feelings of social anxiety—for example, about why you were left off an email at work or whether your siblings are maneuvering to make you host Thanksgiving this year. In its clinical definition, paranoia is the mistaken belief that intentional harm is likely to occur; it spans a range of intensities, from low-level ideation to profound delusions—that is, from mildly uncomfortable uncertainty about others’ intentions to an unshakable conviction that one is being persecuted by government agents.

Led by Associate Provost and Professor Jack J. Blanchard, Associate Professor Alex Shackman and Assistant Research Scientist Jason Smith—all in the Department of Psychology—the project was awarded a $3.7 million grant over five years from the National Institutes for Mental Health in 2021. In 2018, seed grant funding from the Brain and Behavior Institute (BBI) allowed the team to gather preliminary data and lay the groundwork for the proposal submission and subsequent award.

The project provides a crucial first opportunity to compare brain circuit functions as quantified in the artificial confines of an MRI scanner to those that occur during everyday experiences and behaviors, measured by smartphones and wearables, Shackman said.

Published on Mon, Jun 13, 2022 - 10:37AM