Remote digital test flags cognitive impairment in older adults

In a preprint study of 2,249 older human adults with an average age of 70, researchers evaluated the Mayo Test Drive, a remote, self-administered digital cognitive assessment battery. The cohort included 2,131 cognitively unimpaired participants and 118 individuals with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia who completed the assessment remotely. Amyloid- and tau-PET imaging was available for 1,224 participants. The digital tool discriminated cognitively unimpaired adults from impaired participants with an area under the curve of 0.89, and yielded an AUC of 0.88 for mild cognitive impairment alone. Discriminability reached an AUC of 0.95 when comparing amyloid-negative unimpaired individuals to amyloid-positive impaired individuals. For separating amyloid- and tau-negative adults from double-positive individuals, the test achieved an AUC of 0.76, outperforming an estimated Mini-Mental State Examination and matching the in-person Mayo-PACC composite.