Lynchburg Business

CogniCheck: At-Home Memory Screenings Fill a Need

Issue: May 2010 by Johanna Calfee in Inside The Magazine, Senior Services

How well do you remember faces? What if you were asked to put a series of numbers in order seconds after they were played back-to-back in two second intervals? Could you recall and write out a group of words shown in the same time frame? If you’ve ever worried that you or a loved one is losing memory or cognitive ability, a test developed at Virginia Teach and a resulting company based right here in Lynchburg may put your mind at ease—or urge you to seek further testing from your family physician.

CogniCheck Memory Screenings is a product that allows users to complete clinically-tested memory screenings through a computer test given on a CD. Lasting about an hour, test takers are asked to recall a number of images, words and numbers, sometimes in order, to test their memory and compare it to the “norm” for the test taker’s age group.

“This CD, to our knowledge, is the first known product of its kind that allows users to complete memory screening in the comfort and privacy of their own home,” said W. David Crews, Jr., Ph.D., Licensed Clinical Neuropsychologist and President of CogniCheck, Inc. “Suffering early stage memory loss can be tricky to identify, but we believe that CogniCheck is a pretty comprehensive assessment.”

CogniCheck, Inc., is currently based out of Lynchburg, though Crews developed the technology in the Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory at Virginia Tech in conjunction with colleagues David W. Harrison, Ph.D., Director of the Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory and Associate Professor of Psychology at Virginia Tech, David Robertson, J. Frederick Watson and “several stellar interns.” The result is a CD that requires only basic computer skills and no internet connection.

“The screenings given in the doctor’s office are very brief and only involve 30 questions, but this CD’s sensitivity, we believe, is better than the routine one given at the doctor’s office,” Crews said.

The idea for CogniCheck came about a few years ago, when Crews and his team received a grant for a Memory Screening Outreach Program, which offered free memory screenings to 1,000 people in Central and Southwest Virginia. The response was overwhelming.

“Within the first two weeks of announcing the program, we had 544 people signed up and we quickly realized we couldn’t continue to see that many people,” Crews explained. “So we came up with the idea of a computer assessment.”

Once the software was developed, it was tested on a large group of people, all of whom Crews describes as “cognitively intact,” in order to determine the mean and standard deviation against which to measure future results. The participants were also divided up by age group in order to create a “norm” for each age range. Since the test was designed to screen seven aspects of short-term memory in persons 45 to 86 years of age, one of the goals of the software is to aid in the identification of “age-inappropriate” memory impairments.

With a large population of baby boomers in the area, Crews believes now more than ever, a test like CogniCheck is needed.

“Having been in [private] practice and seeing so many patients with dementia and the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease…it’s just a terrible disease. But now data is coming out about the benefits of early detection,” he said. “If any impairments are shown in the screening, we encourage people to follow-up with their physicians to determine the level of impairment and the underlying cause.”

While he’s quick to point out that CogniCheck is for screening purposes only and not a diagnostic screening, Crews also believes that it gives reliable results, and acts as an early indicator of potential problems.

“If nothing else, it’s great for baseline screening,” Crews said.

The test itself is easy to use and understand. Participants simply watch a series of words, numbers or human faces flash across the monitor, and are then asked to recall them immediately after the series is shown, and then again a half an hour later. The results are clearly labeled and give each tester a readout of their raw score, the percentile into which that score falls compared to the norm and an explanation as to what that score means, like “Below Average,” “Average” and “Well Above Average.”

The test does come with a cost—$14.99—but Crews is quick to point out that he believes this price is very reasonable, especially when considering that there is nothing else like it on the market right now.

“We think this could be of great benefit to a lot of people, and it’s affordable to them. We probably won’t make much money off this, but it’s not our goal to become rich off this CD; our goal is really to help people,” he said.

Regardless of the test’s outcome, CogniCheck acts as peace of mind for many of its users, according to Crews, who points out that once the fear of memory impairment is put to rest, many people actually perform better on a day-to-day basis.

“We find out that those who discover they aren’t experiencing any age-appropriate memory impairments tend to relax and actually remember things better,” he said. “So, we also think it can also promote overall cognitive wellness.”

For more information about CogniCheck, visit www.cognicheck.com. To order a copy, call 1-888-547-9341 or e-mail contactus@cognicheck.com.