2 - (SYM 17) Leveraging Wearables in Clinical and Research Settings: Recommendations for Collection Platforms and Analytic Software

Psychophysiological variables—including heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and electrodermal activity (EDA)—are indicators of autonomic nervous system functioning implicated in emotional regulation and psychopathology (Maples-Keller et al., 2022). Psychophysiological signals like HR, HRV, and EDA can be leveraged to assess cognitive, social, and functional domains by overcoming subjective biases associated with self-, caregiver- and observer report (Harvey et al., 2022). Naturalistic measurement can also expand diverse participation in research, by removing barriers of time and geographic distance required for lab-based assessments. In-situ biosensing data has the potential to provide peripheral physiological indicators of response to psychotherapeutic interventions. Measuring psychophysiological signals naturalistically and during psychotherapeutic sessions has additional unique advantages in elucidating mechanistic and causal processes. This presentation will integrate diverse expertise in psychophysiological data collection using wearable devices to compare and contrast systems for clinical and research applications. Then, data analytic methods will be compared and contrasted for open source and subscription-based. Empirical evidence  supporting the use of these wearable biosensors to provide valid and reliable indices of psychophysiological signals—like EDA, photoplethysmography (PPG), electrocardiography (ECG), and electromyography (EMG)—will be reviewed in terms of the end-to-end user experience, accessibility of raw data, data quality, and data security (Hernando et al., 2018; Grasser et al., 2022; Lui et al., 2022; Miller et al., 2022; Velmovitsky et al., 2022; Grasser et al., 2023). For example, our team has shown reliability of wearables for tracking commensurate changes in HR--an indicator of arousal--and HRV--an indicator of regulation (multilevel model of data from n=7 youth who underwent 6 exposure treatment sessions and were assessed during each session indicated that decreased HR was associated with increased HRV over treatment, B=-1.05, t(8.24)=-7.22, p< .001). Individual case-level data provide evidence for corresponding improvements in clinical symptoms. Finally, we will discuss considerations of racial bias and variation related to biological sex in psychophysiological measures (Harnett et al., 2023). The ultimate goal of this panel is to expand the use of wearables for the measurement of peripheral physiology in clinical and research settings.