New study highlights superior efficacy of at-home dry EEG assessment compared to lab-based monitoring

Cumulus Neuroscience announces positive results from a new study evaluating thevalidity of using its dry-electroencephalogram (EEG) headset and gamifiedcognitive tasks for unsupervised home-based measurement of cognition, with at-home EEG monitoring showing superior precision compared to lab-based assessments.

Cumulus’ integrated digital and physiological biomarker platform provides wireless”dry” EEG recording systems and easy-to-use engaging tasks that can be operatedrepeatedly by users at home. This provides a dramatically lower trial burden forpatients and greater opportunity for the collection of real-world, longitudinal datacompared to traditional lab-based, “wet” EEG. The platform enables larger scaledistributed clinical trials in CNS, which measure the progression of brain disordersmore accurately and therefore accelerate the approval of impactful therapies.

For the study, published in Frontiers in Digital Health , data was gathered at homeover the course of several weeks by two separate cohorts of participants – 50 olderadults (mean age 68 years) and 30 younger adults (mean age 26 years) – using awireless dry EEG system interfaced with a tablet for task presentation. The taskswere gamified and designed to be suitable for ordinary users. Usability of the EEGsystem was evaluated via participant adherence and qualitative feedback using theSystem Usability Scale.

The study found that home-based gamified dry EEG in aggregate has superiorprecision to single in-lab based sessions, and that only 2 to 4 dry EEG sessions arerequired to match the quality of wet EEG recordings. Adherence was also high, witholder adults successfully completing 93% of sessions requested and reporting amean usability score of 84. Younger adults successfully completed 96% of sessionsand reported a mean usability score of 88.

The results indicate that easy-to-use task-driven EEG could have transformativepotential for enabling large-scale, real-world investigations in clinical research.

“This latest study adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the use of at-home, dry EEG measurements as an effective and less burdensome alternative tolab-based tests, including a companion study published in Frontiers in Psychiatrylast year,” said Florentine M. Barbey of the School of Psychology, Trinity CollegeDublin, co-author of the paper and Research Scientist at Cumulus Neuroscience.”We are also encouraged to see such high adherence and engagement comparedto other methods of measuring cognitive decline. Facilitating frequent, at-homeassessment in CNS research will help address current difficulties in collectinglongitudinal data that better demonstrates subtle changes in cognition over time,allowing for a better understanding of how brain disorders progress and howinterventions may affect them.”

The study was conducted in collaboration with the Whelan Lab at Trinity CollegeDublin’s Institute for Neuroscience, and also used data from a joint study with theUniversities of Magdeburg and Tuebingen.

The full paper, Neuroscience from the comfort of your home: Repeated, self-administered wireless dry EEG measures brain function with high fidelity , can beaccessed here .