Test-Retest Reliability of Measures Commonly Used to Measure Striatal Dysfunction across Multiple Testing Sessions: A...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Clinical Neurology

Background:

• Cognitive impairment is prevalent in neurodegenerative movement disorders like Huntington's and Parkinson's disease.
• Reliable cognitive tasks are crucial for tracking disease progression and treatment response in clinical trials.
• Practice effects can confound results, necessitating careful task selection and methodology.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the test-retest reliability of four commonly used cognitive tasks in assessing striatal impairment.
• To identify tasks particularly vulnerable to practice effects in patients with neurodegenerative movement disorders.

Main Methods:

• Assessed test-retest reliability across three sessions for a Simon Stop-Signal Task, an emotion recognition task, a circle tracing task, and the trail making task.
• Analyzed performance across sessions, focusing on practice effects and reliability of key outcome measures.

Main Results:

• Practice effects were observed across all tasks between the first two sessions, particularly for reaction time variables.
• Emotion recognition, circle tracing, and trail making tasks demonstrated good test-retest reliability.
• The Simon Stop-Signal Task showed moderate reliability for its interference effect and SSRT, but poor reliability for the combined SSRT interference effect.

Conclusions:

• Emotion recognition, circle tracing, and trail making tasks are reliable for assessing cognitive dysfunction in neurodegenerative movement disorders.
• The Simon Stop-Signal Task's reliability is variable, requiring cautious interpretation and potential use of control groups or pre-baseline training.
• Careful consideration of task-specific practice effects is essential for accurate clinical trial outcomes.