Laurie Barclay, MD
NEW YORK (MedscapeWire) May 01 A test of working memory can help to determine the extent of traumatic brain injury in children and monitor recovery, according to an Annals of Neurology study published online May 1. By asking the child to look for letters that match or rhyme, the 2-part test taps working memory, which is difficult to assess in children due to lack of brain maturation.
"We show that brain-injured children can perform this test, suggesting that it could be used for diagnostic purposes, to study reorganization of function, or as an outcome measure for drug trials," lead author Harvey S. Levin, PhD, from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, said in a news release.
In the letter identity test, the child matches a letter flashed onto a computer screen for 2 seconds with a subsequent letter. To make the task progressively more difficult, 1, 2, or 3 nonmatching letters appear between the matching letters, and the child's score takes successful matches as well as false alarms into account. In the second part of the test, the child matches letters that rhyme.
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