Novel cognitive testing tool for epilepsy patients and the cognitive deficits detected

Poster Session C - Sunday, April 14, 2024, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Hannah G. Gray^1,2 (hgray24@uwo.ca), Karnig Kazazian^1,2, Conor Wild^1,2, Derek B. Debicki^1,2, Adrian M. Owen^1,2, Teneille Gofton^1,2; ¹Western University, ²London (Ontario) Health Sciences Centre

People with epilepsy (PwE) often have impaired cognition. However, cognitive testing instruments commonly used for PwE are lengthy and require in-person administration. Moreover, PwE often live far from tertiary care centres. Fully understanding the cognitive abilities of PwE is essential for developing targeted and proactive neuropsychological interventions for this population. Thus, it is imperative to identify an efficient, yet comprehensive, cognitive assessment for PwE that can also be administered remotely. This pilot study assesses the feasibility of using an online cognitive testing battery called Creyos for PwE to explore their cognition. Creyos involves 12 tasks, each evaluating a different area of cognition and taking one to three minutes to complete. Participants are recruited from an in-patient neurology unit in London, Ontario, Canada and complete the tasks on an iPad from their hospital bed. Results are compared to age- and sex-matched norms from the Creyos normative database of over 75,000 healthy individuals. Thus far, 46 PwE (mean age = 38.0 (SD=16.2), 29 females) completed the Creyos battery. Participants performed significantly worse than matched norms on 11 tasks (p<.05) and in the three broad cognitive domains that the 12 tasks map onto: short-term memory (t= -6.235), reasoning abilities (t= -4.163), and verbal processing (t= -7.094) (p<0.05). This work supports previous research showing deficits among PwE in several cognitive areas, and especially contributes to the limited literature on objective short-term memory deficits among PwE. We also established the feasibility of Creyos for PwE and support the use of online cognitive testing for PwE.

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