02/17/2024
09:00 am - 10:30 am
Room: Broadway Ballroom
Invited Symposium 5
Online and Remote Cognitive Assessment in Ageing and Neurodegeneration
Summary Abstract:
Online and remote cognitive assessments are becoming increasingly popular since they allow conveniently establishing baseline cognitive profiles as well as monitoring cognitive changes over time. This is particularly true for ageing and neurodegenerative populations, which often require the establishment of cognitive trajectories over time to detect incipient and prodromal cognitive changes. However, challenges for online and remote cognitive assessments remain, such as a lack of validation data to date and having less control over the actual cognitive assessment progress. Despite these challenges, we believe that online and remote cognitive assessments are the way forward for cognitive assessments in the future and will provide neuropsychologists with a further toolbox complementing their in-person cognitive evaluations. This symposium will present 3 different toolboxes aimed at online and remote cognitive assessments in ageing and neurodegenerative conditions. We will discuss the advantages and drawbacks of these online cognitive platforms. Finally, we will highlight some new approaches to collect large normative cognitive data via online and gamified methods to improve future detection and monitoring of cognitive changes in ageing and neurodegeneration.
Number of Credit Hours: 1.5
Level of Instruction: Intermediate
Learning Objectives:
1. Learn about existing online and remote cognitive testing platforms for ageing and neurodegeneration
2. Explain current advantages and drawbacks of online and remote cognitive testing platforms
3. Explore future ways to collect large normative data for better personalised cognitive profiling
Presenter(s):
Michael Hornberger, PhD
Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, UK
Michael is the Professor of Applied Dementia Research at the Norwich Medical School. His research focuses on improving diagnosis, disease progression tracking and symptom management in dementia. Michael's research group employs various research methodologies (clinical, cognition, sensor technology, neuroimaging and genetics) as well as disease interventions (pharmacological and non-pharmacological) for their research studies. His current research is particularly focused on spatial orientation and navigation deficits in dementia and how this has an impact on people's outdoor activities such as driving and walking safely. Michael has also been conducting online and remote cognitive assessment for many years, specifically his Sea Hero Quest project is to date still one of the largest online cognitive studies worldwide. He further established the NeurOn (Neuropsychology Online) platform which has been extensively used for research and is now being adopted by clinical services.
Kate Possin, PhD
UCSF
Kate Possin is a Professor at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in the Department of Neurology and at the Global Brain Health Institute, where she holds the John Douglas French Foundation Endowed Professorship.
Dr. Possin’s research program is focused on improving the detection, diagnosis, and care for people with neurodegenerative disease. She directs the Care Ecosystem, a telephone-based collaborative care model for people with dementia and their caregivers that improves patient quality of life and caregiver well-being, while reducing emergency-related health care costs. She has designed and developed cognitive measures for early diagnosis and disease monitoring, including tablet-based measures (“TabCAT”) that are easy to use in everyday clinical and research settings.
Jason Hassenstab, PhD
Washington University in St. Louis
Jason Hassenstab, PhD is a Professor in the departments of Neurology and Psychological & Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, USA. He is the director of the Cognitive Technology Research Laboratory (CTRLab) and also directs the Cognition Cores for the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN), the DIAN Trials Unit (DIAN-TU), and the Knight Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Prof. Hassenstab is also the Principal Investigator of the ARC-DS study, an international multisite study of Down syndrome-associated Alzheimer disease with performance sites in EU, UK, South America, and the United States. His research areas have focused on cognitive and biomarker studies of aging and Alzheimer’s disease, with a specialization in digital approaches for measuring cognition and behavior. The CTRLab developed the Ambulatory Research in Cognition (ARC) smartphone platform, which applies principles from ecological momentary assessment and experience sampling to capture cognition, sleep, and physical activity. The ARC platform is currently deployed in DIAN, DIAN-TU, the Knight ADRC, and in several collaborations including industry-led clinical trials for AD therapeutics. Prof. Hassenstab maintains active collaborations across several related disciplines, including neuropsychiatry, frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), sleep research, and developing novel digital approaches for studying normal aging. He has over 150 peer-reviewed publications and has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health and non-profit foundations since 2008. His greatest joys are mentoring trainees at all levels and fostering international collaborations.
