What neuropsychological functions best discriminate performance in adults post-stroke?

This study aimed to develop a short version of an instrument to detect cognitive impairment in stroke patients, investigate which cognitive dimensions best discriminate between stroke patients and healthy adults and to graphically analyze the relationships among the neuropsychological variables and groups. This pilot study included 94 adults (49 post-stroke and 45 neurologically healthy) who answered the Brief Neuropsychological Assessment Battery NEUPSILIN for patients with expressive aphasia (NEUPSILIN-Af) to assess orientation, perception, memory, praxis, executive functions, oral language, and academic achievement (written language and arithmetic). The IRT Rasch model for dichotomous data indicated the exclusion of items that could not be used to discriminate performances. ROC curves indicated that only the orientation, oral language, academic achievement, and executive function dimensions could be used to differentiate between the clinical and healthy groups. Graphical analysis indicated that independently of the relation among variables, orientation and executive functions tasks are essentials in the neuropsychological assessments. This study contributes to the development of specific and sensitive neuropsychological instruments to assess stroke patients and to better understand the common deficits present in this clinical population.