Clinical Validation of Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery in a Norwegian Epilepsy Population

Introduction: Semi-automatic neuropsychological testing has gained a position both in clinical use and in research. Comparison studies with traditional neuropsychological tests are sparse and the role of such semi-automated testing is debated. To integrate semi-automated neuropsychological testing in the established clinical setting the tests must be validated in the patient groups addressed. The aim of this study was to validate Cambridge Neuropsychological Tests Automated Battery (CANTAB) in patients with epilepsy. Material and Methods: Patients scheduled for traditional neuropsychological testing with Category test (CT), Trail Making Test part B (TMT-B), WAIS-III and WMS-R were also asked to complete the CANTAB battery. Our hypothesis was that memory tests from CANTAB (DMS, PAL) would correlate with visual memory tests from WMS-R and that a test of executive functions from CANTAB (SOC) would correlate with functions tested with TMT-B, CT and WAIS-III. Results: Scores from DMS correlated strongly with Visual Paired Associations 1 from WMS-R. From SOC results correlated both with Visual Paired Association 1 & 2, General Memory Index and Full Scale IQ. Results from PAL correlated with several results from the traditional battery: Verbal, Visual and General Memory Index, Paired Associations, Visual Memory Span Backwards, TmtB and Visual IQ. Conclusion: Our results indicate that DMS primarily tests visual matching to sample. SOC tests executive functions and also depends on non-verbal IQ and memory. Numerous correlations between PAL and traditional tests illustrates that PAL is a complex task depending on several cognitive domains, but mainly memory.