Computerised Tests of Brain Function for Use with Indigenous People

Abstract

An assessment of brain function (or cognitive function) has become an important process with applications in a growing number of areas including medicine, psychiatry, occupational selection, law and education. The most sophisticated, direct and precise measurements of brain function are obtained using brain imaging techniques (e.g., fMRI, MRI and PET). However these hospital-based techniques are expensive and immobile and are therefore not appropriate for use in many applications. When brain imaging techniques are not appropriate, cognitive tests have been shown to provide accurate measures of brain function that can be interpreted within robust brain-behaviour models, based on extensive research with healthy humans, primates and humans with specific brain lesions.