The foundation of IntraNeuron's Memory Exam is drawn from the highly respected and empirically supported field of neuropsychology. The IntraNeuron Memory Exam uses accurate neuropsychological tests for its early detection of cognitive decline.
The IntraNeuron Memory Exam utilizes neuropsychological assessment, speech recognition, speech synthesis, and machine learning to maximize utilization across multiple settings (e.g., medical office, hospital, in-home).
Neuropsychological tests provide an objective measure of an individual's cognitive strengths and weaknesses. A neuropsychological test provides information about the cognitive abilities of a person, such as problem-solving skills, memory and decision-making.
Why Neuropsychological Tests
Neuropsychological tests focus on learning and behavior related to an individual's brain and incorporates knowledge of brain development, organization, and function into the assessment of outcomes.
Neuropsychological tests measure mental processes, including memory, attention, reasoning, decision making and other cognitive functions that help the person in everyday life. Neuropsychological tests are considered the most comprehensive type of assessment of brain function.
Neuropsychological tests provide an understanding of the underlying brain function of an individual and the relationship between the brain, behavior, and learning.
Are Neuropsychological Tests Accurate
Neuropsychological tests can help to establish an accurate diagnosis, facilitate treatment planning, provide information about a person's mental health status, symptoms and symptoms of mental illness, and help to make accurate diagnoses.
Measurements of the brain's learning ability, problem-solving ability, attention, memory, thinking, decision-making, processing speed, and other aspects of brain function to determine how the brain works are vital for medical professionals to accurately diagnose cognitive problems.
Neuropsychological tests vary in accuracy. Intraneuron has selected tests that are highly accurate, in determining cognitive problems related to dementia.
Accuracy of cognitive tests is based on the number of false negatives and false positives (specificity and sensitivity) a test has during research studies. False negatives refer to the number of people, who actually have condition but are found not to have it by the test. Conversely false positives refer to the number of people who do not have a condition but are found to have it according to the test.
Popular cognitive screening tests that typically last five to ten minutes and are designed to screen for general cognitive impairments are inaccurate, i.e. they have either a high number of false negatives, false positives or both.
Scoring of neuropsychological tests is done by taking a raw score from a participant and comparing that score to a standardized population of people who have taken the test to determine to what extent the performance deviates from the expected range.
Performance on neuropsychological tests varies, by age, gender, education and other demographics. For that reason, to get the most accurate result a score must be compared to a group closes to the above parameters.
Neuropsychological Tests Complement Other Procedures
Neuropsychological tests complement neuroimaging and electrophysiological procedures. Clinical neuropsychologists have found that neuropsychological tests can play a role in diagnosing and treating a wide range of neurological disorders such as Dementia, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electroencephalogram (EEG) assess the structural integrity of the central nervous system by detecting atrophy and lesions.
By clarifying whether cognitive abilities are impaired or preserved in patients with brain injuries or diseases, neuropsychologists can predict how well the patients respond to various forms of treatment and rehabilitation. By displaying patterns in test scores with profiles of cognitive strengths and weaknesses and by observing how patients approach certain tests, they can learn a lot about them. For example, two patients can complete the test in very different ways and achieve similar results.
Alzheimer's Disease
The prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is spiking as the population ages. AD involves slowly accruing neuron losses that evolve over several years before clinical manifestations of dementia occur.
Early and accurate detection of AD is critical to proper care, efficient use of resources, and promotion of research. Early detection of Alzheimer's is hampered by over-reliance on outdated and inaccurate mental status screening tools. Inaccurate diagnosis of AD may contribute to the 99% failure rate among clinical trials and the low rate of accurate diagnosis in the community (1:4 individuals). Early and accurate detection of the Alzheimer's pathology may benefit patient and families by facilitating access to appropriate therapeutics.
The standard work up for AD includes longitudinal history and physical exams, lab screenings, and mental status testing. In the earliest phases of the AD process the clinical standard of care is prone to misdiagnosis. Recent refinement of neuropsychological test interpretation techniques has resulted in improved etiological specificity related to the presence of the Alzheimer's type pathology.