Infusing clinical research with participants stories using Fabla
In collaboration with the Georgia CTSA AppHatchery, our lab administers Fabla, a highly customizable ecological assessment platform that centers participants’ stories as told in their own words and images. Current projects include:
- Optimizing psilocybin for treatment of depression (funded by the Vail Health Foundation and Tiny Blue Dot Foundation)
- Challenging and adverse effects of psychedelics: Phenomenology, influencing factors and remedies (funded by the Sarlo Family Foundation)
- Investigating daily experiences during ketamine treatment for chronic pain (funded by Legacy Health)
- Understanding and treating substance use disorder and comorbid conditions in veterans’ real-life settings (funded by the Minneapolis VA Medical Center)
- Feasibility study of a chaplain-delivered compassion intervention to improve psychological safety among interprofessional healthcare teams (funded by NIH)
- Identifying neural signatures of racial discrimination in black individuals with a multivariate data fusion approach (funded by NIH)
- When does meditation expand the perception box? A comparative longitudinal study (funded by the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation)
Innovating speech-based tools and analytics for health and wellbeing
Leveraging cutting-edge developments in ambulatory technologies and artificial intelligence, our lab is developing new tools and analytic methods for speech-based technologies. Examples include speech-based detection of depression and anxiety and the development of a speech-based tool for use in psychotherapy.
Development and validation of ecological assessment measures for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy
After the acute “trip” of a psychedelic has worn off, what changes for people about their day-to-day life experiences? In collaboration with the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, the HEAT lab is developing and validating ecological assessment tools that enable investigations of how psychological and behavioral changes unfold over time following psychedelic experiences.
Digital twin decision making tools in healthcare
Digital Twins are a type of artificial intelligence technology that uses a Tacit Object Modeler (TOM). With support from the Emory AIM Center, we are conducting pre-implementation research that aims to identify healthcare providers’ perspectives and preferences about how this type of technology can best support medical decision-making in their clinical practices.
Psycho-spiritual dimensions of generative artificial intelligence (AI)
ChatGPT, Claude, and other generative AI technologies are forcing a public confrontation with what it means to be sentient in the first place. In collaboration with Emory University Center for the Advancement of Diagnostics for a Just Society and Emory Spiritual Health, our lab is pursuing cross-disciplinary scholarship and empirical research that probes existential and spiritual questions underlying the emerging human partnership with chatbots.