

Kinect can now be used to diagnose depression with 90% accuracy? - SilentStump
http://thescorpionthefrog.com/2013/04/02/now-my-kinect-can-tell-me-if-im-depressed-with-90-accuracy/

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mistercow
As usual, vague terms like "90% accuracy" are thrown around without specifying
what exactly they mean. Is that a 10% false positive rate? A 10% false
negative rate? 90% accuracy over a representative sample of the general
population?

Because the last one is what would _seem_ to be implied, but I have a much
simpler program, written in pure JavaScript, that is also 90% accurate at
diagnosing Americans with depression:
<https://gist.github.com/osuushi/5297823>

Since, according to the CDC[1], about 10% of Americans are depressed, my
script will be accurate 90% of the time.

[1] <http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/>

~~~
barbs
_> I have a much simpler program, written in pure JavaScript, that is also 90%
accurate at Diagnosing Americans with depression_

...well played.

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prsutherland
90% isn't all that great of a result considering only about 6.7% of the US
population suffers from depression each year[1] and the study was done in
California. Just returning false would give you better accuracy.

Still Eliza on steroids is pretty cool. Can't wait till they integrate it into
emacs.

[1] <http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1MDD_ADULT.shtml>

~~~
aray
They give their hypothesis in the paper, and each is shown with a p value <
0.05, so is statistically significant (and better than just returning false :)

[http://schererstefan.net/assets/files/scherer_etal_FG2013.pd...](http://schererstefan.net/assets/files/scherer_etal_FG2013.pdf)

~~~
prsutherland
p values are a measure of the accuracy of the numbers. They are measuring how
close the sample mean is to the population mean. In the case of the paper, the
p values represent how close the sample mean of the head gaze, eye gaze, smile
intensity and smile duration measurements are to the population means of the
same values.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value>

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tunesmith
This is interesting to me because... is there even a scientific definition of
depression yet? Such that, if you have a defined list of symptoms, you are
definitely depressed, and if you don't, you are definitely not depressed?

If not, we're at best talking about a magnitudinal thing or a probability
thing. Like a Bayesian thing where each symptom's presence updates the
probability of the person being depressed, which is turn based off of a
database of previous cases of diagnosed depression and what symptoms they had.

But even that may be circular, ultimately. It could just as well be that
depression is a vague category of similar symptoms that each come from a wide
variety of scientific causes.

This is not to be mistaken for saying it doesn't exist or that it's all in
someone's head - it's more just to say that if someone has depression, they
have _something_ that may deserve treatment and sensitivity, but that it's
something that we still do not know _exactly_ how to describe or diagnose, and
so therefore we will just call it "depression" in the meantime. But what if
we've sort of collectively forgotten the "in the meantime" part?

~~~
ggchappell
> This is interesting to me because... is there even a scientific definition
> of depression yet? Such that, if you have a defined list of symptoms, you
> are definitely depressed, and if you don't, you are definitely not
> depressed?

It depends a bit on what you mean. In the U.S. at least, diagnosis of
depression is generally based on the American Psychiatric Association's
_Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_ (DSM).[1] That lists a
number of disorders that would be categorized under "depression", including
"Major Depressive Disorder", "Dysthymia", and the catchily named "Depressive
Disorder Not Otherwise Specified".

In the DSM, these disorders are all treated as _syndromes_ , meaning they are
defined entirely by symptoms. They may have organic causes (troubles with
neurotransmitters, etc.), but the _definition_ of each disorder does not
address that issue. This is in contrast to something like influenza, which
refers to a particular organic cause (infection by a certain kind of virus).

As for the actual definitions, they vary in how specific they are. Major
Depressive Disorder is quite specific, requiring certain kinds of episodes to
occur with specified frequencies and lengths. On the other end of the scale is
DD-NOS, which is essentially defined as a depression-ish thing that doesn't
fit into any of the other categories. (Okay, it's a little more precise than
that, but, honestly, not much.)

> This is not to be mistaken for saying it doesn't exist or that it's all in
> someone's head - it's more just to say that if someone has depression, they
> have something that may deserve treatment and sensitivity, but that it's
> something that we still do not know exactly how to describe or diagnose, and
> so therefore we will just call it "depression" in the meantime.

I'd say that's pretty much on target. However, biology & biochemistry are
proceeding forward at a breakneck pace these days. We do have some
understanding of the causes for some kinds of depression, and this
understanding seems to be improving significantly each year.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Man...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders)

~~~
stcredzero
What about correlations with patterns in MRI scans?

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
MRI's are expensive (in the US). Specialist mental health care is not covered
under most standard health insurance plans. How about you just fill out the
questionnaire[1], and we'll match you with a nice (newly patented) pill?

[1] <http://www.depressedtest.com>

See also: Questionable sponsorship of online depression tests.

[http://www.policymed.com/2010/02/letters-from-grassley-
quest...](http://www.policymed.com/2010/02/letters-from-grassley-questions-
webmd-advertising-model.html)

------
moocow01
"SimSensei can work out whether you’re exhibiting signs that indicate
depression"

Im not sure I totally buy it - Im sure it can pick up the signs with 90%
accuracy but how often do the signs actually correspond to a clinically
depressed person. Just because your in a down mood at one moment does not mean
you are depressed - depression is just a lot more complex than that. Im not
sure that this would be of much use in accurate diagnosis although it seems
like pretty interesting tech.

~~~
TillE
Depends on the kind of questions they're asking, really.

As someone with relatively mild depression, you'd never know it in normal
conversation. But if you ask directly about symptoms and I give honest
answers, both the answers themselves and my body language will probably give
you a pretty good indication.

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danso
First of all, this is blog spam, and the OP has apparently never tried viewing
their own site on a tablet.

Second, where's the methodology.

Third, it's not the Kinect doing the diagnosing, it's the computer vision
algorithm

~~~
rck
It looks like the research paper this is based on is here:

[http://schererstefan.net/assets/files/scherer_etal_FG2013.pd...](http://schererstefan.net/assets/files/scherer_etal_FG2013.pdf)

I've only skimmed it, but the vision work looks sound, and it looks like it
makes pretty essential use of the depth map from the Kinect. But I don't think
there's any speech recognition going on, so that part is just acting (from
both the humans and the virtual platform). I'll bet an untrained user could
get the system to break pretty quickly...

Neat proof of concept, though.

~~~
a_bonobo
Another thing is that this needs a properly trained interviewer, and it's not
based on the Kinect's measurements alone but also on the questions asked (and
the reaction is then measured). The behaviour of the interviewer is a great
confounding factor in this.

Reminds me of a certain someone asking another certain someone why he flipped
a tortoise in the desert...

~~~
rck
I think the problem isn't with the published paper - it looks like they used a
trained human interviewer and recorded both humans to evaluate their
descriptors. The real problem is with the PR video, which looks really
impressive, but seriously oversells the capabilities of the system. Not that
the problem is unique to this situation - I think a lot of the videos in AI
oversell the research. It's a pity, because the research is usually very good,
but by itself isn't "exciting enough for general consumption," so they add
bells and whistles that have nothing to do with the science.

~~~
a_bonobo
You're right, posting the paper and not that blog-post would have led to a
much more interesting discussion.

One of the strangest things in that SimSensei is the automated interviewer -
when I talk to a recorded voice instead of a real person, I behave enormously
different! Why should I fidget around in answering when no-one really listens
anyway? Why should I give proper answers? Why should I exhibit signs of shame
when I talk to no-one about myself?

This doesn't work like described in the paper.

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brunorsini
Doctors tried something similar with paper forms in the 60s. It was pretty
disastrous, given depression is such a complex, "3d" kind of issue. Adam
Curtis explored this theme in perhaps his best series of documentaries, "The
Trap" - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbRApO3k_Jo>

~~~
jimktrains2
Well, the Kinect should give 3D data, so that should help, right? :)

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opminion
As if depression were a Boolean label.

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eric970
If it's as accurate as the team says it is, this is pretty astounding IMO.
They'd have to be capturing some sort of baseline in the beginning of the
conversation, and recording relative shifts of variables (ie; smile, eye
shift/location) to come up with how "depressed" the person is. Just writing
some software that says "oh this person is looking down" probably wouldn't cut
it-- because shy people look down too. I noticed in the demo it seemed as if
it started monitoring these things after certain questions were asked, which
would be the correct way to measure a shift from baseline. Elicit a
predictable period of what could be change and record.

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anigbrowl
I'm tempted to send this to my shrink to see if he'll take the hint and cut
his prices. I'm not optimistic, though.

~~~
SilentStump
This article actually reminded me a lot of iCouch.me, which is like virtual
therapy.

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caycep
Actually, I'm looking to do something like this in related applications. Just
need to find time to go through the kinect capabilities....my own unit has
been gathering dust on my shelf for a while. Anyone in southern california (LA
area or within driving distance) want to talk about this?

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gruseom
Do psychiatrists' diagnoses of depression even agree with that level of
accuracy amongst themselves?

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us_and_them
Maybe its just most Xbox360 users are depressed about spending $400 just so
they can play Halo.

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ck2
How does it determine depression vs boredom?

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goggles99
Wow - So has those 20 question things that have been in magazines and tabloids
for 40 years.....

