Passive cognitive assessment across the menopausal transition

PROJECT SUMMARY Menopause is a traditionally underappreciated and undertreated condition that affects approximately 1 billion women worldwide. Half of those women also have significant symptoms associated with the menopausal transition, including sleep disturbances, vasomotor symptoms, and brain fog or cognitive dysfunction. One of the reasons for the treatment gap in menopause care relates to difficulties in obtaining reliable measures of cognitive dysfunction with high temporal resolution. The goal of the proposed project is to further develop and test a novel, passive, unobtrusive tool for assessing cognitive function through smartphone interactions, called Skye, for use in peri- and post-menopausal women. Phase I will support the cross-platform development of Skye (Aim 1) and will test the feasibility and usability of Skye, utilizing an iterative design process with two focus groups of peri- and post-menopausal women from diverse socioeconomic and racial/ethnic backgrounds (Aim 2). In Phase II, we will leverage existing studies funded by the National Institute on Aging to validate the cognitive score derived from Skye with gold-standard neuropsychological assessments and neuroimaging measures. We will further test the hypothesis that Skye is sensitive enough to detect cognitive changes secondary to sleep disturbances and vasomotor symptoms in peri- and post-menopausal women (Aim 3). The successful achievement of the Aims will provide vital evidence for the utility of Skye in addressing the unmet needs of a growing market estimated to cost the United States $26.6 billion annually.