The NIH Toolbox ‑First Comprehensive & Standardized Tests of Brain Function- To Be Released Next Week

Neu­ro­science Just Got Faster, Cheap­er and Eas­i­er (press release):

“On Sept. 10 and 11, Ger­shon will intro­duce the new NIH Tool­box for Assess­ment of Behav­ioral and Neu­ro­log­i­cal Func­tion to hun­dreds of researchers at a spe­cial Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) con­fer­ence in Bethes­da, Mary­land. At the end of Sep­tem­ber, the resource will be made ful­ly avail­able to the research com­mu­ni­ty and clinicians.

Ger­shon, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of med­ical social sci­ences at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty Fein­berg School of Med­i­cine, has led an ambi­tious six-year NIH-fund­ed study reflect­ing the efforts of 235 sci­en­tists around the world that pro­vides the first com­mon mea­sure­ments for neu­ro­log­i­cal and behav­ioral health. Cur­rent­ly, one researcher’s test to mea­sure depres­sion, for exam­ple, isn’t the same as another’s, so their study results aren’t com­pa­ra­ble. Research is built on oth­ers’ find­ings so stan­dard­iza­tion will be of sig­nif­i­cant benefit.

The new set of tests — avail­able in Span­ish and Eng­lish — slash­es the num­ber of ques­tions and time required for study par­tic­i­pants by up to 90 per­cent. The tests also are roy­al­ty-free (some oth­er tests often have expen­sive roy­al­ties that hike the cost of research) and can be admin­is­tered by any­one with a basic col­lege edu­ca­tion, a less expen­sive alter­na­tive to the Ph.D. lev­el-per­son with spe­cial­ized train­ing now required to admin­is­ter them.”

About the NIH Tool­box:

• “NIH Tool­box is a mul­ti­di­men­sion­al set of brief mea­sures assess­ing cog­ni­tive, emo­tion­al, motor and sen­so­ry func­tion from ages 3–85, meet­ing the need for a stan­dard set of mea­sures that can be used as a “com­mon cur­ren­cy” across diverse study designs and settings.”
• “By using mul­ti­ple con­structs of each domain, the NIH Tool­box mon­i­tors neu­ro­log­i­cal and behav­ioral func­tion over time, and mea­sures the domain con­structs across devel­op­men­tal stages. This facil­i­tates the study of func­tion­al changes across the lifes­pan, includ­ing eval­u­at­ing inter­ven­tion and treat­ment effectiveness.