Circadian Rhythms Of Social Activity Research Articles

Gaining Insights Into the Estimation of the Circadian Rhythms of Social Activity in Older Adults From Their Telephone Call Activity With Statistical Learning: Observational Study.

BackgroundUnderstanding the social mechanisms of the circadian rhythms of activity represents a major issue in better managing the mechanisms of age-related diseases occurring over time in the elderly population. The automated analysis of call detail records (CDRs) provided by modern phone technologies can help meet such an objective. At this stage, however, whether and how the circadian rhythms of telephone call activity can be automatically and properly modeled in the elderly population remains to be established.ObjectiveOur goal for this study is to address whether and how the circadian rhythms of social activity observed through telephone calls could be automatically modeled in older adults.MethodsWe analyzed a 12-month data set of outgoing telephone CDRs of 26 adults older than 65 years of age. We designed a statistical learning modeling approach adapted for exploratory analysis. First, Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) were calculated to automatically model each participant’s circadian rhythm of telephone call activity. Second, k-means clustering was used for grouping participants into distinct groups depending on the characteristics of their personal GMMs.ResultsThe results showed the existence of specific structures of telephone call activity in the daily social activity of older adults. At the individual level, GMMs allowed the identification of personal habits, such as morningness-eveningness for making calls. At the population level, k-means clustering allowed the structuring of these individual habits into specific morningness or eveningness clusters.ConclusionsThese findings support the potential of phone technologies and statistical learning approaches to automatically provide personalized and precise information on the social rhythms of telephone call activity of older individuals. Futures studies could integrate such digital insights with other sources of data to complete assessments of the circadian rhythms of activity in elderly populations.

Novel statistical approach for assessing the persistence of the circadian rhythms of social activity from telephone call detail records in older adults

How circadian rhythms of activity manifest themselves in social life of humans remains one of the most intriguing questions in chronobiology and a major issue for personalized medicine. Over the past years, substantial advances have been made in understanding the personal nature and the robustness—i.e. the persistence—of the circadian rhythms of social activity by the analysis of phone use. At this stage however, the consistency of such advances as their statistical validity remains unclear. The present paper has been specifically designed to address this issue. To this end, we propose a novel statistical procedure for the measurement of the circadian rhythms of social activity which is particularly well-suited for the existing framework of persistence analysis. Furthermore, we illustrate how this procedure works concretely by assessing the persistence of the circadian rhythms of telephone call activity from a 12-month call detail records (CDRs) dataset of adults over than 65 years. The results show the ability of our approach for assessing persistence with a statistical significance. In the field of CDRs analysis, this novel statistical approach can be used for completing the existing methods used to analyze the persistence of the circadian rhythms of a social nature. More importantly, it provides an opportunity to open up the analysis of CDRs for various domains of application in personalized medicine requiring access to statistical significance such as health care monitoring.

Exploitation of Outgoing and Incoming Telephone Calls in the Context of Circadian Rhythms of Social Activity Among Elderly People: Observational Descriptive Study.

BackgroundIn the elderly population, analysis of the circadian rhythms of social activity may help in supervising homebound disabled and chronically ill populations. Circadian rhythms are monitored over time to determine, for example, the stability of the organization of daily social activity rhythms and the occurrence of particular desynchronizations in the way older adults act and react socially during the day. Recently, analysis of telephone call detail records has led to the possibility of determining circadian rhythms of social activity in an objective unobtrusive way for young patients from their outgoing telephone calls. At this stage, however, the analysis of incoming call rhythms and the comparison of their organization with respect to outgoing calls remains to be performed in underinvestigated populations (in particular, older populations).ObjectiveThis study investigated the persistence and synchronization of circadian rhythms in telephone communication by older adults.MethodsThe study used a longitudinal 12-month data set combining call detail records and questionnaire data from 26 volunteers aged 70 years or more to determine the existence of persistent and synchronized circadian rhythms in their telephone communications. The study worked with the following four specific telecommunication parameters: (1) recipient of the telephone call (alter), (2) time at which the call began, (3) duration of the call, and (4) direction of the call. We focused on the following two issues: (1) the existence of persistent circadian rhythms of outgoing and incoming telephone calls in the older population and (2) synchronization with circadian rhythms in the way the older population places and responds to telephone calls.ResultsThe results showed that older adults have their own specific circadian rhythms for placing telephone calls and receiving telephone calls. These rhythms are partly structured by the way in which older adults allocate their communication time over the day. In addition, despite minor differences between circadian rhythms for outgoing and incoming calls, our analysis suggests the two rhythms could be synchronized.ConclusionsThese results suggest the existence of potential persistent and synchronized circadian rhythms in the outgoing and incoming telephone activities of older adults.

How to Measure Circadian Rhythms of Activity and Their Disruptions in Humans Using Passive and Unobtrusive Capture of Phone Call Activity.

Monitoring circadian rhythms of social activity is crucial for preserving the health and wellness of ill elderly people. In this paper, we assess the ability of phones to be used as a temporal and social daily activity sensor from a passive and unobstructive measure of phone call activity. To this end, we introduce a methodology specifically designed to automatically measure both persistence and disruptions in circadian rhythms of phone call activity with 26 adults older than 65 years.