OBJECTIVE A new brief computerized test battery that uses tactile stimulation, Brain Gauge (BG), has been proposed as a cognitive assessment aid and its developers have reported an almost perfect ability to distinguish acute mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) patients from healthy controls. This investigation attempted to replicate those results and serve as an initial psychometrically and clinically focused analysis of BG. METHODS BG scores from 73 military service members (SM) assessed within 7 days after having a clinically diagnosed mTBI were compared to 100 healthy SMs. Mean scores were compared, score distributions were examined, and univariate and multivariate base rate analyses of low scores were performed. RESULTS SMs with mTBI had statistically significantly worse performance on both BG Reaction Time (RT) tests and the Sequential Amplitude Discrimination test as reflected by higher mean RT and RT variability and higher minimum detectable amplitude difference. SMs with mTBI also had a significantly lower whole-battery composite (i.e., Cortical Metric Symptom Score). Larger proportions of SMs with mTBI had lower overall performance than controls. However, at most only 26.9% of those with mTBI performed at potentially clinically meaningful cutoffs that were defined as various numbers of low scores that were prevalent in no more than 10% of the control group, which is equivalent to specificity ≥90% and sensitivity ≤26.9% for mTBI. CONCLUSION Our analysis did not replicate the high level of classification accuracy reported by BG's developers. Pending further psychometric development, BG may have limited clinical utility for assessing mTBI patients.

中文翻译：

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脑量计基于触觉的测试电池的初步心理测量分析及其在评估急性轻度创伤性脑损伤患者的临床应用中的潜力。

目标 一种新的使用触觉刺激的简短计算机化测试电池，Brain Gauge (BG)，已被提议作为认知评估辅助工具，其开发人员报告了一种几乎完美的能力来区分急性轻度创伤性脑损伤 (mTBI) 患者与健康对照组。这项调查试图复制这些结果，并作为 BG 的初步心理测量和临床重点分析。方法 将临床诊断为 mTBI 后 7 天内评估的 73 名军人 (SM) 的 BG 评分与 100 名健康 SM 进行比较。比较平均分数，检查分数分布，并对低分进行单变量和多变量基本率分析。结果 具有 mTBI 的 SM 在 BG 反应时间 (RT) 测试和序列幅度辨别测试中的性能明显较差，这反映在较高的平均 RT 和 RT 变异性以及较高的最小可检测幅度差异上。具有 mTBI 的 SM 也具有显着较低的全电池复合材料（即皮质指标症状评分）。较大比例的 mTBI SM 的整体表现低于对照组。然而，最多只有 26.9% 的 mTBI 患者在具有潜在临床意义的临界值下进行，该临界值被定义为在不超过 10% 的对照组中普遍存在的各种低分，这相当于特异性 ≥90% 和敏感性mTBI ≤26.9%。结论 我们的分析没有复制 BG 开发人员报告的高水平分类准确度。