Improving Prediction of Cognitive Performance using Deep Neural Networks in Sparse Data
This work addresses the problem of predicting cognitive decline for clinical applications, though it is incremental as it applies existing DNN methods to a specific dataset.
The study tackled predicting cognitive performance from sparse health data, finding that deep neural networks achieved the lowest error and were robust to missing data, with statistically significant RMSE improvements over other models.
Cognition in midlife is an important predictor of age-related mental decline and statistical models that predict cognitive performance can be useful for predicting decline. However, existing models struggle to capture complex relationships between physical, sociodemographic, psychological and mental health factors that effect cognition. Using data from an observational, cohort study, Midlife in the United States (MIDUS), we modeled a large number of variables to predict executive function and episodic memory measures. We used cross-sectional and longitudinal outcomes with varying sparsity, or amount of missing data. Deep neural network (DNN) models consistently ranked highest in all of the cognitive performance prediction tasks, as assessed with root mean squared error (RMSE) on out-of-sample data. RMSE differences between DNN and other model types were statistically significant (T(8) = -3.70; p < 0.05). The interaction effect between model type and sparsity was significant (F(9)=59.20; p < 0.01), indicating the success of DNNs can partly be attributed to their robustness and ability to model hierarchical relationships between health-related factors. Our findings underscore the potential of neural networks to model clinical datasets and allow better understanding of factors that lead to cognitive decline.