The Use of Digital Technology to Assess Cognitive Function in Tunisian Adults

Background: There has been increasing evidence and support for the use of digital technology in the cognitive health field. Despite the growing use of innovative digital technology to assess cognitive function, such technology remains scarce in Arabic countries, particularly in Tunisia. Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of a digitally delivered cognitive assessment battery in differentiating varying degrees of cognitive function in older Tunisian adults. Methods: One hundred fifty-five Tunisian older adults (age: 62.24±7.52 years) were assigned to one of four groups: healthy controls (HC), at-risk (AR), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Participants completed a translated version of the Neurotrack digital cognitive battery. Results: The AD group performed significantly lower on the associative learning ( p = 0.01) and associative memory assessments ( p = 0.002), than the HC and AR groups. The AD group also performed worse on the inhibition measure ( p = 0.008) than the HC, AR, and MCI groups. For recognition memory, the was a significant difference between all four groups ( p < 0.0005), with AD having the lowest scores followed by the MCI, AR, and HC groups, respectively. There were no significant differences observed on attention, executive function and processing speed performance between the four groups ( p > 0.05). Conclusion: The use of digital technology appears to be a viable solution to current cognitive assessment challenges for assessing cognitive function in a Tunisian population. These findings provide further support for the use of digital technology in cognitive assessment, particularly in understudied populations.