In 2018 a large nationally representative survey study alerted readers to the potential link between use of smartphones and increases in depressive and suicide-related symptoms among U.S. adolescents. To help develop interventions to address this important problem, Olga Tymofiyeva, PhD, assistant professor in the UC San Francisco Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, along with her colleagues, embarked on the quest of trying to understand of the brain mechanisms that underlie potential smartphone dependence.
They recently published an exploratory study of 19 adolescent volunteers who completed self-assessments of their smartphone dependence, depressive symptoms and sleep problems. Each of the 19 adolescents underwent diffusion MRI that allowed for assessment of white matter structural connectivity within the framework of connectomics.
In alignment with the…
