Remote Neuropsychological Assessment of Patients With Neurological Disorders and Injuries

The neurological disorders and injuries are characterized by damage to neurons in the central nervous system. Since many of these damages affect the brain, rudimentary functions of the brain, including cognition, are often affected in these patient groups which include traumatic brain injuries, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, epilepsy and different forms of brain tumors.

Neuropsychological assessment of cognitive functions plays a central role in both diagnostics and evaluation as well as planning of treatment and rehabilitation for these patients. Today, the neuropsychological evaluation is often used as an objective way of determining cognitive dysfunction that can be used for medical statements about ability to work, or to establish level of functioning in insurance cases.

Traditional neuropsychological assessment is performed in a physical meeting between the patient and a psychologist in charge of the examination, where different cognitive functions are assessed. For example, the psychologist can read out loud words or numbers to be remembered by the patient (working and long-term memory), the patient might search for a specific target on a piece of paper (attention or mental speed), or that the patient is instructed to say as many words as possible starting with a specific letter (verbal fluency and executive functions). The same function is often tested with different tests to validate the results, and the results are interpreted in the light of the patient's behavior and amnestic information. After the testing session, the psychologist is faced with an often time-demanding task of scoring and comparing the results to normative data. Since the start of the new millennium, computer-based tests or a combination of computers and "paper-pencil tests" of tablets have become more common in clinical use. These have reduced some the time that the psychologist has to spend on scoring, but still mean that the patient has to come to the clinic to undergo the neuropsychological examination.

During the corona pandemic, many health care visits were cancelled, when many patients, especially in the older population, had to minimize the risk of infection. In Sweden, a large and sparsely populated country, another challenge to physical meetings in health care is long and demanding travels for patients. Thus, many visits to health care, both before and during the pandemic, has be transferred to digital form and online platforms.

Neuropsychological evaluations are however not directly transferable into digital form. Both reliability and validity of the neuropsychological assessment are highly reliant on standardization of instructions and administration procedures. Since the results from the tests are compared to the results of a normal population, where the standardized administration procedure has been used, it is very important that the testing with patients are performed in the same way. If the administration procedure is changed too much, the results will not be reliable nor valid. Systematic reviews and meta analyses have shown that some verbal tests may be possible to perform in a video conference meeting, but for tests involving motor or visual processing, this cannot be recommended.

Thus, there is a need for the development of instruments that can enable psychologists to perform neuropsychological evaluations remotely, where both administration and scoring are performed automatically, saving cost and time for the health care system. Mindmore (www.mindmore.com) is a digital neuropsychological test battery developed in Sweden and it has been validated in a Swedish healthy population, and normative data has been collected. Included in this battery are tests of audioverbal learning and episodic memory, mental speed, working memory and executive functions in the form of inhibition, shifting and verbal fluency. However, this system still requires a visit to health care where the testing is performed. Now, Mindmore is launching a self-administered desktop version of this battery, Mindmore Distance, which can be performed on any computer or tablet with an internet connection. This is the first Swedish test on the market able to perform neuropsychological tests remotely. It is very important that neuropsychological tests are developed, validated and normed in the countries where they will be used clinically, since language, culture and education affect results on these tests at a very high degree. Mindmore Distance is right now being validated and normed in a healthy Swedish population, but no study has been performed on patients. Validating test in specific patient groups is critical since this can answer whether the tests are suitable for the patients and to see if the tests are possible to use to discriminate between different patient groups or between patients and healthy controls.

In a cross-sectional design, patients with neurological disorders or injuries will be tested using Mindmore Distance at home, and traditional neuropsychological test with a neuropsychologist at Neuro-Head-Neck-Centre (NHHC) at the Umeå University Hospital, Umeå, Sweden. Patient groups included are: Traumatic brain injury (TBI), Stroke, Multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Epilepsy and Brain Tumors.

When referred to neuropsychological examination at NHHC, patients will receive written information about the project and contact information to the principal investigator to whom they can turn for questions. If they wish to participate, a link in the letter will take them to the research person information, where they can sign informed consent using Scrive e-sign (scrive.com) and digital identification (BankID). After this, patients will be randomized to performing standard neuropsychological assessment at the clinic or Mindmore Distance at home first. This randomization procedure is used to control for test-retest or learning effects.

Healthy controls will be recruited through advertising, where they through a link will reach the same page as patients. After signing informed consent, a similar randomization procedure as for patients will take place. Healthy controls will perform the physical neuropsychological examination at a specific occasion in the facilities of the Department of Psychology, Umeå University. In the same session as the traditional neuropsychological evaluation, both patients and healthy controls will complete questionnaires on demographical and health related factors.

The validity of Mindmore test will be validated against traditional paper-pencil neuropsychological test using Pearson and/or Spearman correlation coefficients, interpreted using Cohens (1992) cutoffs of weak (0.1), medium (0.3) and strong (0.5) correlations. Further, multiple linear regressions will be performed to investigate and adjust for background variables.