A critical analysis of digital phenotyping and the neuro-digital complex in psychiatry

Bibliographic Data

ID5261189
AuthorsRodrigo De La Fabian (0000-0003-2374-6289, Diego Portales University, corresponding author), Álvaro Jiménez-Molina (0000-0002-5621-9322, Millennium Institute for Research in Depression and Personality), Francisco Pizarro (0000-0002-8344-4971, Diego Portales University)
Year2023
Volume10
Issue1
Publication date2023-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBig Data & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2053-9517 • E-ISSN: 2053-9517
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/20539517221149097
OpenAlexW4317721476
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited91

This article critically examines the emergence and uses of digital phenotyping in contemporary psychiatry. From an analysis of its discourses and practices, we show that digital phenotyping diffusion is directly related to its promise to solve some of the major impasses of the so-called "neuro-turn" in contemporary psychiatry. However, more than a new tool to address old objects of pre-digital psychiatry, we consider digital phenotyping as participating from a new onto-epistemological matrix, the "neuro-digital complex," which entails the redefinition of psychiatric objects (e.g., brain and mind), diagnostic categories and procedures, subjectivities (e.g., users of mental health apps), and the emergence of a new regime of truth which promises to reveal the neuropsychological core at the individual scale. Despite this techno-utopia, digital phenotyping does not produce neutral mirrors for self-knowledge. We show that it resorts to population statistics, grounded truth data sets built with pre-digital neuropsychological assumptions, and human categorization processes. Nevertheless, we propose not to approach this gap as a misleading ideological fact but to emphasize its productive possibilities. From this perspective, the gap becomes the measure between whom we think we are and who we really are, working as a guide to conduct our lives in neuropsychological terms. Thus, we conclude that, rather than providing personalized diagnoses and treatments, digital phenotyping produces individualized pathways to normalization and neuropsychologization

Categorization · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Data science · Digital health · Epistemology · Neuropsychology · Philosophy of biology · Philosophy of science · Political science · Population · Psychiatry · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Digital Mental Health Interventions · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence

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