Computational Clinical Neuropsychology: Constructing process models to better understand cognitive problems in cancer patients

Our online neuropsychological battery, the Amsterdam Cognition Scan, has the strengths of traditional neuropsychological tests but additionally records data on every response, with millisecond precision. This allows us to use all available subtest, stimulus, and response information to disentangle specific cognitive processes, and to identify with more precision the nature of the cognitive impairment.

We use previously collected Amsterdam Cognition Scan data from cancer patients treated with various cancer treatments (chemo, endocrine, immunotherapy) and controls to:

1. replace imprecise and uninformative sum score outcomes of cognitive functioning with theoretically meaningful and more informative cognitive process outcomes.
2. investigate whether cognitive side-effects are mediated by other cognitive processes and outcomes (e.g. patient-reported outcomes and brain structures), and which cognitive process outcomes are directly affected by cancer and cancer treatment.
3. investigate whether cognitive process outcomes can be improved with existing interventions.