Introduction
Unsupervised digital cognitive testing is an appealing means to capture subtle cognitive decline in preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here, we describe development, feasibility, and validity of the Boston Remote Assessment for Neurocognitive Health (BRANCH) against in‐person cognitive testing and amyloid/tau burden.
Methods
BRANCH is web‐based, self‐guided, and assesses memory processes vulnerable in AD. Clinically normal participants (n = 234; aged 50–89) completed BRANCH; a subset underwent in‐person cognitive testing and positron emission tomography imaging. Mean accuracy across BRANCH tests (Categories, Face‐Name‐Occupation, Groceries, Signs) was calculated.
Results
BRANCH was feasible to complete on participants’ own devices (primarily smartphones). Technical difficulties and invalid/unusable data were infrequent. BRANCH psychometric properties were sound, including good retest reliability. BRANCH was correlated with in‐person cognitive testing (
r
= 0.617,
P
< .001). Lower BRANCH score was associated with greater amyloid (
r
= –0.205,
P
= .007) and entorhinal tau (
r
= –0.178,
P
= .026).
Discussion
BRANCH reliably captures meaningful cognitive information remotely, suggesting promise as a digital cognitive marker sensitive early in the AD trajectory.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.