Defense Automated Neurobehavioral Assessment Accurately Measures Cognition in Patients Undergoing Electroconvulsive Therapy for Major Depressive Disorder

Abstract

Defense Automated Neurobehavioral Assessment is an electronic, mobile, repeatable, sensitive, and valid method of measuring cognition over time in depressed patients undergoing electroconvulsive therapy treatment. Automation of the DANA allows for more frequent cognitive testing in a busy clinical setting and enhances cognitive assessment sensitivity with a timed component to each test.

Comparing Cognitive Tests and Smartphone‐Based Assessment in 2 US Community‐Based Cohorts

“…This finding aligns with another study that found DANA subtests correlated with Mini‐Mental State Examination in patients undergoing electroconvulsive therapy treatment. 30 Hollinger et al found that among all the DANA subtests, Code Substitution measures were most strongly associated with the Mini‐Mental State Examination in their sample. 30 Thus, the findings from the current study lend further support for the potential usefulness of Code Substitution to measure subtle impairment across diverse clinical groups.…”

“… 30 Hollinger et al found that among all the DANA subtests, Code Substitution measures were most strongly associated with the Mini‐Mental State Examination in their sample. 30 Thus, the findings from the current study lend further support for the potential usefulness of Code Substitution to measure subtle impairment across diverse clinical groups. However, another study found that Code Substitution was not reliably completed by patients having an Alzheimer disease diagnosis.…”

“…The DANA protocol has been compared with the standard Mini‐Mental State Examination and was reported to be an electronic, mobile, repeatable, sensitive, and valid method of measuring cognition over time in patients who are depressed and undergoing electroconvulsive therapy treatment. 30 The smartphone‐based app is compatible with Android and iPhone and consists of 6 cognitive tests, 3 of which were selected for harmonization across sites included in this study. These 3 tasks included the Code Substitution, the Go/No‐Go, and the Simple Reaction Time tests.…”

Digital neuropsychological measures by defense automated neurocognitive assessment: reference values and clinical correlates

“…However, DANA’s versatility quickly became apparent, leading to its adoption in a wide range of applications across clinical and research domains. Beyond its original military focus, DANA could be applied in diverse scenarios, including the assessment of traumatic brain injury ( 7 ), caregiver burden ( 8 ), hypoxic burden at high altitudes ( 9 ), and cognition changes in mental health treatments ( 10 ). The psychometric properties of the DANA test batteries have been thoroughly assessed and documented, confirming DANA as a reliable and valid tool for neuropsychological assessment ( 3 , 11–14 ).…”

Wearable and digital technology tools: Neuropsychological assessment, monitoring, and diagnosis in the digital era.

“…DANA app scores and traditional neuropsychological tests captured similar cognitive patterns, but the app provided a more comprehensive picture over time (Au et al, 2021). The app data have also been correlated with the Mini-Mental State Examination cognitive test (Hollinger et al, 2018) and could identify subtle cognitive deficits following concussion (Servatius et al, 2018). A growing number of other smartphone cognitive apps have been validated with concurrent measures of contextualized functional outcomes (Price et al, 2017) and traditional neuropsychological tests (Lancaster et al, 2020).…”