Braintracer, MoodTune

MoodTune is a mobile platform for patient self-management and treatment optimization for people with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). It offers assessment, tracking, communication and therapeutic tasks.

MDD is one of the most prevalent, debilitating, and recurrent disorders in the US
• Affects >15% of US adults at least once
• 40-50% fail to respond to antidepressants (Trivedi et al 2006) or therapy (DeRubeis et al 2005)
• Up to 40% will relapse within 2 years (Boland & Keller 2009)

The consequences of MDD include suicide, impaired functioning and reduced life quality; and increased use of medical and mental health services (Greden 2001; Trivedi et al 2008).

MoodTune qualifies & quantifies prevalence of depression in a target, and provides interactive tasks to “train” the mood. Unlike other “mood tracking apps” it monitors for medical comorbidities & correlations to provide personalized treatment profiles.

Interactive tasks stimulate the mood regulating center of the brain to support symptom improvement
• Impaired executive functions emerged as one of the core cognitive deficits in MDD (Austin et al 2001). Executive dysfunction (1) is evident in the acute depressed phase (e.g., Porter et al 2003); (2) persists after remission (e.g., Smith et al 2006); (3) predicts poor response to pharmacological treatment (e.g., Alexopoulos et al 2005); and (4) worsens with increasing numbers of episodes (e.g., Sweeney et al 2000).
• Relative to controls, MDD subjects show reduced volume or gray matter concentration (e.g., Abe et al 2010; Treadway et al 2009).
• Mayberg et al first reported that increased resting metabolism in the rACC (through interactive tasks) predicted better antidepressant response in MDD. We report findings from a meta-analysis that assessed the robustness of this finding in “Pizzagalli 2011”

It is available in iTunes & Google Play (paid app), and we work with institutional clients under license agreements.