The Italian Version of the Test Your Memory (TYM-I): A Tool to Detect Mild Cognitive Impairment in the Clinical Setting

The Test Your Memory (TYM) is a brief self-administered, cognitive screening test, currently used in several settings. It requires minimal administrator supervision and the computation of the final test score takes approximately 2 min. We assessed the discrimination ability of the Italian version of the TYM (TYM-I) in detecting Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) in clinical setting. TYM-I was administered to 94 MCI patients and 134 healthy controls. The clinical diagnosis of MCI was considered as the gold standard. An extended formal neuropsychological test battery was used to define MCI subtypes. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses were conducted to find the optimal cut-off and measure discrimination ability of TYM-I in detecting MCI. TYM-I had a similar area under the curve (AUC = 0.85) point estimate as Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) (AUC = 0.83). A TYM-I score lower or equal to 36 was found to be optimal cut off to detect MCI. The TYM-I showed the highest discrimination ability among individuals aged more than 70 and high educational level (AUC = 0.89). The amnestic MCI subtype patients, compared to non-amnestic MCI patients, had worse performance in recall, orientation and visuospatial abilities TYM-I subscores. The TYM-I is a valid screening test in detecting cognitive dysfunction, easily carried out in clinical practice. The TYM-I subscores may allow to identify amnestic and non-amnestic MCI subtypes.