Comparison of in-person and teleneuropsychological administration of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status in a movement disorder sample

<b>Objective:</b> Teleneuropsychology (TeleNP) shows promise as an alternative visit type for patients in which face-to-face (FTF) neuropsychological evaluation is not a viable option. Undergoing FTF presurgical deep brain stimulation (DBS) neuropsychological evaluations may represent a hardship for some patients with movement disorders, yet comparison of performance for TeleNP and FTF for the commonly used Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) has not been studied in this population. The current study aimed to examine RBANS performance of FTF and TeleNP administration in a cohort of movement disorders patients in a clinical setting, hypothesizing similar performance regardless of modality. <b>Method:</b> Four hundred six patients with Parkinson's disease or essential tremor completed the RBANS between two medical centers between 2020 and 2024 as part of standard clinical care within their presurgical assessment for candidacy for DBS or High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound thalamotomy. <b>Results:</b> The TeleNP sample was significantly older than the FTF sample (<i>p</i> = .02). There were no statistical differences in gender (<i>p</i> = .18) or education (<i>p</i> = .66) between the samples. After controlling for age and motor diagnosis differences between the two groups, 9 of the 11 RBANS subtests were comparable, with the TeleNP group performing significantly better on the Picture Naming subtest and the FTF group performing significantly better on the Figure Recall subtest. The effect size of these differences were small, indicating relatively low clinical meaningfulness. <b>Conclusions:</b> The findings of the current study suggest the two methods of administration were associated with broadly comparable performances in this movement disorder population, suggesting TeleNP may be a viable option for presurgical evaluation.