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The Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS) has recently been developed as a fast and easy cognitive
screening tool specifi cally designed for patients with motor impairments in routine clinical use. The German/Swiss-German
version of the ECAS was validated in a German-Swiss consortium. One hundred and thirty-six non-demented ALS
patients and 160 healthy controls were included in the study. In addition, the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB), Montreal
Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer ’ s Disease plus Scale (CERAD plus)
were administered to subgroups of patients. Results showed that administration of ECAS was fast (mean 24 min). Similar
to the population in the UK version, ALS patients performed signifi cantly worse in the ALS-specifi c functions ( p 0.001),
specifi cally in the domain of language ( p 0.001), verbal fl uency ( p 0.005) and executive functions ( p 0.02), but not
for the non-ALS-specifi c functions. Carers reported behavioural abnormalities in about 30% and psychotic symptoms in
6% of the patients. Compared to ECAS, FAB, MoCA and CERAD were more generic and performance was not adjusted
to motor speed. We conclude that the German/Swiss-German version of the ECAS is a fast and easy to administer cognitive
screening instrument sensitive for ALS-specifi c dysfunctions and behaviour change.