Translational Neuropsychology Group

The majority of stroke survivors experience changes in varied cognitive domains in the early stages after stroke. While some stroke survivors recover from early cognitive impairments, cognition remains a problem for many patients, with up to one third of stroke survivors going on to develop dementia.

The Translational Neuropsychology Group aims to improve cognitive care for stroke survivors by bringing together the expertise of clinical researchers, cognitive neuropsychologists, clinicians, allied health professionals (including occupational therapists), and clinical psychologists. We have developed sensitive tools designed to improve the detection of cognitive changes in clinical settings, including the Oxford Cognitive Screen, which is licensed in over 2000 settings and has been translated into more than 20 different languages. More recently, app-based screening tools like the OCS-Plus and OxMET have also been standardised, normed and validated and made available on the appstores. Our approach to tool development balances neuropsychological rigour and clinical feasibility; we design our tools to be informative yet time- and resource-efficient, and all our tools undergo extensive psychometric validation before being publicly released. To ensure that our tools benefit a large number of stroke survivors, licenses for our tools are free of charge for all publicly funded clinical and research use.

Alongside our ongoing tool development programmes, we have recently received funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to develop a long-term cognitive care pathway for stroke survivors. This research programme involves rigorous scientific analysis of longitudinal data collected by the Translational Neuropsychology Group to determine which early characteristics are predictive of long-term functional and cognitive outcomes. We are particularly interested in the prognostic utility of clinically acquired data, including simple cognitive screening as well as routinely acquired infection markers and diagnostic neuroimaging. We are employing a mixed methods approach to develop a structured long-term cognitive care pathway for stroke, which will be implemented initially in two stroke services to determine feasibility and acceptability in real world settings. We are incorporating the views of multiple stakeholders - including stroke survivors and NHS health professionals – in the development of this pathway, to ensure that it is both acceptable to patients and clinically feasible.

For further information about our ongoing research programmes, please visit our website or contact Professor Nele Demeyere.