Norms for healthy adults aged 18–87 years for the Cognitive Drug Research System: An automated set of tests of attention, information processing and memory for use in clinical trials

Abstract

The Cognitive Drug Research (CDR) System is a set of nine computerized tests of attention, information processing, working memory, executive control and episodic memory which was designed for repeated assessments in research projects. The CDR System has been used extensively in clinical trials involving healthy volunteers for over 30 years, and a database of 7751 individuals aged 18-87 years has been accumulated for pre-treatment data from these studies. This database has been analysed, and the relationships between the various scores with factors, including age, gender and years of full-time education, have been identified. These analyses are reported in this paper, along with tables of norms for the various key measures from the core tasks stratified by age and gender. These norms can be used for a variety of purposes, including the determination of eligibility for participation in clinical trials and the everyday relevance of research findings from the system. In addition, these norms provide valuable information on gender differences and the effects of normal ageing on major aspects of human cognitive function.

Utility, reliability, sensitivity and validity of an online test system designed to monitor changes in cognitive function in clinical trials

“…As has been seen previously with such tasks (Salthouse, , ; Wesnes et al, ), age‐related deficits were seen on all measures, these being of clinically relevant magnitude for one or more measures from all tasks, and for three tasks deficits on one or more measures exceeded the threshold for large effects. The patterns of decline varied slightly between males and females.…”

“…Progress has already been made, in one study over 90 000 individuals performed tests of cognitive function while browsing a website (Wesnes, ). The patterns of cognitive decline with ageing replicated the findings seen in published laboratory‐based studies, confirming the potential of this approach (Wesnes et al, ; Wesnes and Edgar, ).…”

“…The CogTrack TM System is an online set of cognitive tasks (http://www.wesnes.com) based on tests which have been used widely over the last 30 years in a wide range of clinical trials with young and elderly individuals, including those with pathological age‐related cognitive declines (e.g. Nicholl et al, ; Simpson et al, ; Wesnes et al, ). The instructions are presented visually at the start of each testing session and also at the start of each task.…”

“…Part of the assessment profile is CogTrack TM , a newly developed set of online cognitive tasks to assess major aspects of cognitive function. The tasks are based on procedures which over the last 30 years have been widely used in worldwide clinical trials and have consistently shown high sensitivity and reliability (Wesnes et al, ). In PROTECT, the CogTrack TM tasks assess attention, information processing and picture recognition.…”

The essentials of a global index for cognitive function

“…In order to avoid underestimating declines with normal ageing, neuropsychological tests have to assess speed and accuracy of performance [ 28 ]. Crucially, these studies combined cognitive measures with a subjective measure of mood and were able to demonstrate not only enhanced cognition but also a better mood experienced by participants after supplementation, likely through induction of estrogens [ 29 ].…”