A selective review of the ability for variants of the Trail Making Test to assess cognitive impairment

Abstract

The Trail Making Test (TMT) is a popular neuropsychological test derived from the Army Individual Test Battery, which was used by the U.S. Army. Its content was obviously designed within the English cultural context. Consequently, there is ongoing debate regarding TMT’s applicability on non-English speaking population. The objective of this study was to selectively review the major variants of TMT that had been created to address this issue, including color trail test (CTT), shape trail test (STT), and language-specific versions of TMT. Meanwhile, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be conducted along with TMT to clarify the brain activity underlying TMT performance. This review drew conclusions on the clinical utility of these TMT variants. All research articles reviewed were published in English-language, peer-reviewed journals.

Keywords:

• Cognition
• cross-cultural
• fMRI
• Trail Making Test

Acknowledgements

There is no funding involved in the review.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).