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Researchers from the BBHI and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) have published a review article in Frontiers in Digital Health on the use of emerging technologies (digital phenotyping) to assess or predict interoception, chronic stress and self-regulation in adults. The findings reveal a clear pattern: the evidence is concentrated mainly on stress, and most studies limit monitoring to less than one month.

Digital phenotyping (DP) makes it possible to gather detailed information about a person’s health status and behaviour using data collected through smartphones and wearable monitoring devices (for example, fitness bands or smartwatches). “This is still an early-stage field, but with tremendous potential,” says Javier Solana, Director of Research at Institut Guttmann and BBHI researcher. “If the evidence base consolidates, it could support more personalised care by detecting subtle changes in wellbeing, stress or self-regulatory capacity before they translate into more serious problems,” he adds.

The article published in Frontiers in Digital Health is part of the ToBrainHealth project, which aims to better understand how lifestyle habits and behavioural changes influence brain health. Of the 18 studies included, most focused on stress (11), while only 2 addressed interoception (how we perceive internal signals from the body) and 5 examined self-regulation (the ability to manage emotions, behaviour and responses to the environment). “This imbalance reflects that research is moving faster in areas that already have relatively accessible physiological markers—such as heart rate variability (HRV)—whereas more complex constructs like interoception or self-regulation remain difficult to measure consistently using digital data,” explains Marta Álvarez, a researcher at UPM.

Wearables dominate and follow-ups are short

The review also shows that 83% of studies monitored participants for one month or less. According to Solana, “this limits the ability to capture stable patterns and to distinguish, for example, a one-off episode of stress from a chronic stress profile.”

In addition, most studies relied on wearable devices (13), compared with 3 that used only smartphones and 2 that combined both. Among the most commonly used indicators were HRV, heart rate, electrodermal activity, accelerometry, and sleep- and activity-related variables.

Based on these results, the research team identifies key challenges that need to be addressed for the field to mature: longer studies with larger samples to improve robustness; multimodal data collection that combines device-derived information with data about the person’s context (for example, through repeated short questionnaires); and clearer definitions of how to measure interoception and self-regulation using digital data.