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Updated: May 8, 2026
Detecting Behavioral Deficits in Rats After Traumatic Brain Injury
Published on: January 30, 2018
Comparing the sensitivity and specificity of novel motor assessments for traumatic brain injury
Paula K Johnson1,2, Ariana M Hedges-Muncy3, Erin D Bigler1,3
1Neuroscience Center, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA.
Background:
Portable technology that records movements with high accuracy provides potential for sensitive clinical movement tests for individuals who experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Objective:
(1)To present impairments assessed using markerless motion capture (MMC) and (2) to compare the sensitivity and specificity of the MMC-mediated tests to each other and to common clinical tests.
Design:
Screening study, using as criterion standard the ability to classify participant with TBI versus control participant.
Setting:
Research laboratory.
Participants:
The study included 30 individuals with TBI and 101 control participants. Entry criteria included most recent head injury <5 years old, no history of movement issues prior to injury, no movement-affecting medications, and sufficient cognitive ability to follow instructions.
Interventions:
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures:
Performance on MMC-mediated tests and existing clinical analogs. MMC-mediated tests included finger oscillation, simple reaction time, and visually guided movement tasks. For comparison, participants also completed the following clinical tests: Halstead-Reitan finger tapping, simple reaction time test, and Beery Visuomotor Integration test. Impairments were identified as test scores of participants with TBI that fell outside of the 95% interval of control participants' test scores. Random forest analysis was used to calculate the sensitivity and specificity of MMC and clinical tests according to their ability to correctly classify participants with TBI and control participants.
Results:
MMC-mediated tests revealed impairments in more participants with TBI than clinical tests in all three TBI groups (mild, repeated, and moderate to severe). Similarly, MMC-mediated tests revealed a higher percentage of scores as impairments than clinical tests in all three groups with TBI. Furthermore, MMC-mediated tests proved more sensitive and more specific than clinical tests (70% versus 50% and 98% versus 93%, respectively).
Conclusion:
MMC-mediated tests are sensitive and specific (compared to traditional clinical tests) and have potential to fill a gap in clinical care of TBI.
