Association between cognitive ability and functional outcomes following traumatic brain injury- using a computer-based neurocognitive battery

ABSTRACT

Objective: To investigate the contribution of the Cogstate Brief Battery (CBB ^TM) in the explanation of variation of functional outcomes.

Design: Secondary analysis of the practice-based evidence data set.

Setting: Inpatient rehabilitation setting.

Participants: Patients (≥ 18 years of age) with traumatic brain injury who were consecutively admitted to the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute between 2008 and 2011 (n = 65).

Interventions: Not applicable

Main outcome measure: Cognitive and motor components of the Functional Independence Measure.

Results: The addition of the CBB ^TM components resulted in a significantly better model for predicting outcomes than a basic model using demographics and clinical factors. Among all CBB ^TM components, speed and variation in the identification task and accuracy in the one card learning task were significantly associated with cognitive functional outcomes after controlling for demographic and clinical factors. Rehabilitation length of stay was the only significant clinical factor that was correlated with both cognitive and motor outcomes.

Conclusions: Findings of this study suggest the importance of considering visual attention and visual memory in predication of cognitive outcome and provide valuable information for researchers to consider the specific cognitive abilities in functional outcome model in future studies in addition to more traditional factors.

KEYWORDS:

• Brain injury
• cognition
• outcomes
• computer-based assessment

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research; the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research; and Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation for funding the TBI-PBE project and a Toronto Rehabilitation Institute for Supporting SZ.. Also, we thank the investigators of this project at TRI-UHN for making this work a reality and the contribution made by Shaveta Gupta.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

A small Part of the study was presented at the International Brain Injury Association (IBIA) congress, March 2016, The Hague, Netherlands

Additional information

Funding

The National Institutes of Health, National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research [grant no. 1R01HD050439-01]; National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research [grant no. H133A080023], and Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation [grant no. 2007-ABI-ISIS-525] . Also, SZ was supported by a Toronto Rehabilitation Institute scholarship for graduate students. The opinions contained in this article are those of authors and should not be constructed as an official statement from aforementioned funding sources.