{"title":"How the study of digital footprints can supplement research in behavioral genetics and molecular psychology","authors":"C. Montag, P. Dagum, B. Hall, J. Elhai","doi":"10.12688/molpsychol.17401.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12688/molpsychol.17401.1","url":null,"abstract":"Studies that apply digital phenotyping and mobile sensing strategies have increased in recent years enabling a better understanding of psychiatric and psychological conditions, as well as neurodegenerative disorders. Although in this context the study of so-called “digital biomarkers” is proliferating, few studies have actually linked digital footprints to biological variables (and when done, the primary focus lay on brain imaging data). It is well established that many psychological phenotypes such as personality, but also psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, have a genetic basis – to a different heritability extent. Therefore, in the present opinion article we argue that it is of tremendous importance to also link the field of neurogenetics to the study of digital footprints, as the latter gives myriad insights into human life and in an objective way. The large field of behavioral genetics including the discipline of molecular psychology could profit greatly from focusing more on the actual study of behavior instead of solely relying on self-report data of study participants. In order to push this promising field forward, the present theoretical work presents three exemplary scenarios, highlighting where such a combination of digital and genetic data could be fruitful.","PeriodicalId":74223,"journal":{"name":"Molecular psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42260362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spatial attention in natural tasks [version 1; peer review: 2 approved with reservations].","authors":"Melville Wohlgemuth, Angeles Salles, Cynthia Moss","doi":"10.12688/molpsychol.17488.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12688/molpsychol.17488.1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Little is known about fine scale neural dynamics that accompany rapid shifts in spatial attention in freely behaving animals, primarily because reliable indicators of attention are lacking in standard model organisms engaged in natural tasks. The echolocating bat can serve to bridge this gap, as it exhibits robust dynamic behavioral indicators of overt spatial attention as it explores its environment. In particular, the bat actively shifts the aim of its sonar beam to inspect objects in different directions, akin to eye movements and foveation in humans and other visually dominant animals. Further, the bat adjusts the temporal features of sonar calls to attend to objects at different distances, yielding a metric of acoustic gaze along the range axis. Thus, an echolocating bat's call features not only convey the information it uses to probe its surroundings, but also provide fine scale metrics of auditory spatial attention in 3D natural tasks. These explicit metrics of overt spatial attention can be leveraged to uncover general principles of neural coding in the mammalian brain.</p>","PeriodicalId":74223,"journal":{"name":"Molecular psychology","volume":"1 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10269881/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9671937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}