Digital Sensory Phenotyping for Psychiatric Disorders

Today’s genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of psychiatric disorders require massive sample sizes and the identification of biologically relevant phenotypes. Sensory phenotypes, assessed by measuring sensorial function, represent early symptoms of psychiatric disorders, and may involve neurobiological pathways in psychiatric disorders. Yet, sensory phenotypes have rarely been studied in large populations for early diagnosis or GWAS. The concept of using digital devices to collect data on disease-related phenotypes is beginning to attract considerable attention. Is it possible to assess sensory phenotypes dynamically by digital devices? And furthermore, is it possible to explain the pathology of psychiatric disorders through those assessments? In this review, we summarize studies investigating sensory phenotypes and digital phenotyping of psychiatric disorders. We discuss the feasibility of digital phenotyping to better capture disease-related sensory phenotypes. We also discussed potential ethical and privacy issues, which require regulation of governments and collaborations of all researchers to solve. While the emergence of digital phenotyping makes the large-scale and moment-by-moment quantification of sensory phenotypes in psychiatric disorders highly scalable, it also introduces tremendous opportunities for genetic research and health improvement.