neuroSHARE Remote

neuroSHARE Remote Study – Remote Assessment of Neurodegenerative Diseases and Dementia in SHARE

About the project

Speech, olfactory (smell) and specific sleep dysfunctions are among the earliest and most sensitive signs of neurodegeneration. In Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, a decreased sense of smell precedes the motor and cognitive symptoms by years or even decades. Changes in speech, both acoustic and linguistic, are already evident in the prodromal stages of both diseases. The strongest risk factor for Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies is REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder (RBD).

In wave 10 of SHARE (2024–2025), a unique collaboration between SHARE-CZ, the Czech Technical University in Prague and the First Faculty of Medicine of Charles University developed the neuroSHARE module. It measured speech, smell and REM sleep behaviour in a face-to-face survey of 4,000 respondents aged 50+ in the Czech Republic (see neuroSHARE Study in the Czech Republic). The implementation was very successful, but its impact is limited by the costly face-to-face format and by data from a single country.

neuroSHARE Remote develops and validates a cost-effective, remote, self-administered version of the neuroSHARE methodology for multilingual environments, and extends it with new sensitive measures of facial expression, colour vision and hearing. The new methodology is piloted in the Czech Republic and Switzerland, and the main data collection takes place on the full Swiss SHARE sample (about 3,000 respondents) in SHARE wave 11.

Switzerland offers an ideal environment for this step: a single country with three official languages (German, French and Italian), where a multilingual application can be tested and validated. The project links complementary data from both countries – ten waves of SHARE health and cognition data, life history data, and data from the in-depth cognition study HCAP (in the Czech Republic in waves 9 and 11, in Switzerland in wave 11).

How the remote assessment works

Respondents who completed their regular SHARE interview receive an information leaflet with a QR code. The code opens a web application on their smartphone – no installation is needed. The application guides the respondent through all tasks with on-screen instructions and audio or video guides. Upon completion, the data are securely sent to a protected server. The assessment takes about 20–25 minutes and consists of:

• Speech tests – prolonged phonation of the vowel /aaa/, fast repetition of the syllables /pa-ta-ka/, reading a standard text, retelling a short fairy tale, and a short monologue on an everyday topic. The recordings capture acoustic (motor) and language (cognitive) features of speech.
• Facial expression – facial movements are recorded with the phone’s front camera during one of the speech tasks.
• Smell test – a simple, standardized olfactory test kit sent to respondents by mail.
• Sleep questionnaire – the REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder Screening Questionnaire (RBDSQ), completed electronically.
• Hearing – a short hearing assessment adapted to mobile devices.
• Colour vision – a color-arrangement test adapted to smartphone screens.
• Cognition – a short symbol-matching task.

All tests are inexpensive, non-invasive, and can be repeated. The outcomes are computed automatically, which ensures objectivity and scalability. Combining several modalities increases sensitivity to early pathological changes while keeping specificity: a parallel decline of speech, language, facial and smell functions is very likely related to underlying neurodegeneration and not to another condition.

Project development and data collection

• Remote self-administered methodology (2026): development of the web application for speech, facial, hearing and color vision tests, the smell test kit, the electronic RBDSQ, and the study protocol.
• Pilot test and evaluation in the Czech Republic (2026): pilot on a sample of healthy older adults (n = 50), evaluation of the application, instructions, logistics and data transfer, adaptation of the algorithms to different devices; preparation of a generic English version.
• Data collection in Switzerland (2027): translation into German, French and Italian, pilot test (n = 20–30), field rehearsal (n = 100–120), and main data collection among SHARE wave 11 respondents in Switzerland (n ≈ 3,000).
• Analysis and validation (2027–2028): coding of speech, language, facial, smell, hearing and vision data, and construction of a composite, validated index of neurodegeneration; validation against HCAP and SHARE cognition data.
• Data release and international harmonisation (2028): release of the anonymised data in open access, linked to the SHARE panel data; publication of the methodology and the web application for the SHARE and HCAP networks and the international research community (HRS, ELSA, NIA Biomarker Network, Gateway to Global Aging Data).

Expected outputs and milestones

Access to data from the neuroSHARE Remote Study

The data will be available free of charge to all registered SHARE users. The methodology and the web application will be available to all SHARE countries and to the HCAP network for use in other countries and languages.

Project progress

• 2026: The web application is being developed by the Czech Technical University in Prague. A working version with all tasks (speech, facial expression, sleep, hearing, colour vision and symbol-matching tasks) has been completed and is being tested on various smartphones and web browsers. The screens and instructions are being revised based on feedback from the project teams. The pilot test in the Czech Republic is planned for October and November 2026.

• 2026: Pavla Mašková and Vojtěch Illner presented the neuroSHARE Remote project at the kickoff Swiss-Czech Cooperation Programme conference in Prague in September. The SHARE-CH team came to Prague to the conference and to finalize the generic website application that will be tested in the Czech pilot.

Research team

• SHARE-CZ, Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CERGE-EI): Radim Boháček (principal investigator), Alevtina Kuznetsova, Jakub Grossmann

• Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague: Jan Rusz, Vojtěch Illner, Pavla Mašková

• First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University: Petr Dušek

• SHARE-CH, University of Lausanne and FORS: Juergen Maurer, Carmen Borrat-Besson, Robert Reinecke

The project cooperates with SHARE-ERIC and the SHARE Berlin Institute (director David Richter) and the SHARE-ERIC Scientific Monitoring Board (chair Arie Kapteyn).

Contact

Radim Boháček, Ph.D. SHARE-CZ coordinator, principal investigator of neuroSHARE Remote Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences Politických vězňů 7, 111 21 Prague 1, Czech Republic Email: radim.bohacek@cerge-ei.cz

Funding

The neuroSHARE Remote project is supported by Switzerland through the Swiss-Czech Cooperation Programme (Second Swiss Contribution), within the programme Czech-Swiss Research Infrastructure Cooperation, administered by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (call 8K2502).

• Czech-Swiss Research Infrastructure Initiative – Large Research Infrastructures of the Czech Republic (Czech version)

• Swiss-Czech Cooperation Programme – Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic