OCTAL (Oxford Cognitive Testing Portal) is a browser-based platform for remote digital cognitive assessment, developed by the Cognitive Neurology Research Group at the University of Oxford. We offer two versions of the platform, designed for different research contexts.
OCTAL
Comprehensive cognitive battery
The full OCTAL battery comprises 11 tasks spanning four cognitive domains, administered on tablets or computers. It provides a detailed cognitive profile suitable for clinical research and patient characterisation.
Memory
Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (copy & recall) · Object-in-Scene · Oxford Memory Test · Verbal Learning Memory · Corsi-Block
Attention & Processing Speed
Simple Reaction Time · Digit Symbol Substitution
Executive Function
Trail-Making · Tower of London · Go-NoGo · Option Generation
Languages: English and Simplified Chinese.
Validation: OCTAL has been validated with N = 1,664 participants across four studies, including healthy adults across the lifespan and patients from memory clinics. A three-task combination (ROCF + OIS + Trail-Making, ~20 min) achieved AUC = 0.96 for distinguishing Alzheimer’s disease from healthy controls (sensitivity 87.1%, specificity 96.2%). A rapid 5-minute screen (ROCF + DSST) achieved AUC = 0.92 in a memory clinic cohort.
OCTAL requires more complex maintenance and analysis. We recommend it for studies where a comprehensive cognitive profile is needed or where a very specific effect is being investigated — please contact us to discuss suitability before applying for a license.
MiniOCTAL
Quick mobile-first assessment
MiniOCTAL is a streamlined 5-task battery completable in approximately 15–20 minutes on a smartphone, tablet, or computer. It is designed for scalable, remote data collection where brevity and accessibility are priorities.
Motor & Processing Speed
Simple Reaction Time · Digit Symbol Substitution
Memory
Digit Memory (copy, immediate & delayed recall) · Object-in-Scene (immediate & delayed recall)
Visuospatial & Motor
Tangram (copy & delayed recall, with motor trace analysis)
Languages: Available in 23 languages — English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Lithuanian, Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Hebrew, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Somali, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.
Validation (unpublished): MiniOCTAL has been tested with N > 1,000 participants including healthy controls, depression, MCI, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, Parkinson’s disease, and other conditions. Even patients with dementia showed high completion rates (>75%). Most key metrics are sensitive to healthy ageing. In a memory clinic cohort, MiniOCTAL detected ACE-III–defined cognitive impairment with excellent accuracy regardless of cutoff, and predicted ACE-III total scores with a mean error of ±6.4 points. Test–retest reliability has been established in 60 patients too. Publication in preparation.
Best suited for: large-scale population studies, multilingual cohorts, remote screening, epidemiological research, participant-friendly protocols.
Research Applications
OCTAL and MiniOCTAL have been deployed across a range of clinical and population studies. For our latest findings and full publication list, see our News & Publications page.
Healthy Ageing & Normative Data
Large-scale normative data across the adult lifespan, with cohorts established in the UK, China, and Gaza.
Dementia & Neurodegeneration
Alzheimer’s disease · Mild cognitive impairment · Subjective cognitive decline · Parkinson’s disease · Dementia with Lewy bodies · Limbic encephalitis · Frontotemporal dementia
Long-COVID & Post-Infection
Cognitive sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, including processing speed deficits in long-COVID and attentional changes in acute infection survivors.
Psychiatry
Depression and other psychiatric cohorts.
Our Approach
For elderly participants and patients with cognitive difficulties, the assessment experience must be as frictionless as possible. No app downloads, no account creation, no login screens. All OCTAL tasks are entirely web-based — as long as you have an internet connection and a common browser (such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari), it works.
Every task is carefully calibrated to avoid floor effects in impaired populations while remaining sensitive enough that healthy or high-functioning patients do not hit ceiling. Both versions of the platform have been validated and their reliability tested — though only a fraction of our data has been published so far, with more on the way.
Anonymisation is implemented at the data collection stage — no personally identifiable information is stored or transmitted during a study. The platform is hosted on European servers via Pavlovia.org, an established online behavioural testing provider. All data are stored securely on password-protected and encrypted systems, with access restricted to listed researchers.
OCTAL is not a commercial product. It is designed, developed, and maintained by Dr Sijia Zhao under the supervision of Prof Masud Husain — in our own time, without dedicated funding from any organisation. The University of Oxford provides intellectual property protection for the platform. We make it freely available to academic collaborators by choice. We are also open to commercial use — please contact us for details.
Please note that OCTAL is not a software download. Using the platform requires setup, training, and ongoing support for analysis and interpretation of cognitive data. We also hold normative data from healthy participants across age groups, as well as comparable performance data from psychiatric and neurological conditions. Accumulating and maintaining all of this takes significant time and resources. For that reason, an academic license is essentially a research collaboration. Before proceeding, we typically require a Data Transfer Agreement (DTA) between institutions.
Our motivation for sharing OCTAL freely is not to provide a service, but to build something larger together — a growing dataset across diagnoses, age groups, and cultures that helps us all understand the brain and cognition better. We hope collaborators appreciate the effort involved in maintaining this project for the research community.
Academic Licensing
OCTAL is available under an academic license through Oxford University Innovation (OUI). Due to our current capacity, we review all license applications individually and may not be able to accommodate every request.
Before submitting a license application, please contact us to discuss your study requirements and confirm availability:
Prof Masud Husain — masud.husain@ndcn.ox.ac.uk
Dr Sijia Zhao — sijia.zhao@psy.ox.ac.uk
Cognitive Neurology Research Group · University of Oxford
Once your study has been discussed and approved, you can proceed to apply for a license via the link below.