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Effective interventions for the prevention and treatment of child and adolescent obesity play an important role in reducing the global health and economic burden of non-communicable diseases. Although multi-component interventions targeting various health behaviors are deemed promising, evidence for their effectiveness is still limited. Self-regula...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... uses the microphone of a smartphone to detect inhalation, exhalation, silence and noisy sounds to then visually guide the user to perform a slow-paced breathing training. With the help of the visual biofeedback, breathing can be adjusted with the overall goal to improve self-regulation skills. A conceptual overview of the training is depicted in Fig. ...
Context 2
... uses the microphone of a smartphone to detect inhalation, exhalation, silence and noisy sounds to then visually guide the user to perform a slow-paced breathing training. With the help of the visual biofeedback, breathing can be adjusted with the overall goal to improve self-regulation skills. A conceptual overview of the training is depicted in Fig. ...
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Citations
... Our group initially developed the smartphone-based biofeedback breathing training Breeze and further adapted it to address the objectives of this study [48][49][50]71]. Breeze uses the smartphone's microphone to continuously detect breathing phases in real-time (i.e., inhalations, exhalations, and pauses between inhalations and exhalations). ...
Background: Depression remains a global health problem, with its prevalence rising worldwide. Digital biomarkers are increasingly investigated to initiate and tailor scalable interventions targeting depression. Due to the steady influx of new cases, focusing on treatment alone will not suffice; academics and practitioners need to focus on the prevention of depression (i.e., addressing subclinical depression).
Aim: With our study, we aim to (i) develop digital biomarkers for subclinical symptoms of depression, (ii) develop digital biomarkers for severity of subclinical depression, and (iii) investigate the efficacy of a digital intervention in reducing symptoms and severity of subclinical depression.
Method: Participants will interact with the digital intervention BEDDA consisting of a scripted conversational agent, the slow-paced breathing training Breeze, and actionable advice for different symptoms. The intervention comprises
30 daily interactions to be completed in less than 45 days. We will collect self-reports regarding mood, agitation, anhedonia (proximal outcomes; first objective), self-reports regarding depression severity (primary distal outcome; second and third objective), anxiety severity (secondary distal outcome; second and third objective), stress (secondary distal outcome; second and third objective), voice, and breathing. A subsample of 25% of the participants will use smartwatches to record physiological data (e.g., heart-rate, heart-rate variability), which will be used in the analyses for
all three objectives.
Discussion Digital voice- and breathing-based biomarkers may improve diagnosis, prevention, and care by enabling an unobtrusive and either complementary or alternative assessment to self-reports. Furthermore, our results may advance our understanding of underlying psychophysiological changes in subclinical depression. Our study also provides further evidence regarding the efficacy of standalone digital health interventions to prevent depression.
Trial registration: Ethics approval was provided by the Ethics Commission of ETH Zurich (EK-2022-N-31) and the
The way we breathe fundamentally influences our psychophysiological system. Respiration is indeed not only a valid factor for relaxation and mindfulness but also for perceived workload and exertion during motion. Especially controlled slow breathing is found to be highly advantageous during physical activity, as it fosters positive effects on the psychophysiological well-being and can also be manipulated effectively to enhance the running experience. In order to persuade runners to follow certain breathing strategies (e.g. to couple breathing rate with stride rate) the runner needs to be aware of their breathing during running. The use of visual feedback to guide the user and pursue an aspired breathing pattern during running is a promising approach as it is an established method known to enhance breathing awareness and paced breathing in sedentary training settings. Since the potential of gamification for persuasive systems has been established in the PT community, enhancing breathing awareness through a gamified visualization seems to be a promising approach. This paper presents a Gamified Breathing Training Application (GBTA) along with an exploratory study (N=11) investigating the effects of the developed application with three sequential visual feedback scenarios (with and without biofeedback) during treadmill running. Our work focuses on the exploration of changes in conscious breath-control before and after using the GBTA, subjective perception of the breathing alignment process, and the perceived effectiveness of the application. Results show a significant improvement in conscious breath-control after using the GBTA. Further on qualitative user feedback strongly indicates a perceived effectiveness of the GBTA in drawing attention to the own breath during the run and thus facilitated breathing alignment. Overall, our findings suggest a high potential of using further iterations of the GBTA during the run to raise conscious breathing-control and actively engage users in the breathing change process, to facilitate the adaptation towards an aspired breathing pattern.
