title: Neuropsychological assessment of mental deterioration: purpose of a brief battery and a probabilistic definition of "normality" and "non-normality".
abstract: A brief battery for mental deterioration assessment was obtained by Discriminant Analysis techniques from the Mental Deterioration Battery (MDB) (1) and yielded 98% correct classifications in a sample of 60 subjects (30 pathological and 30 controls). This battery, named Brief Mental Deterioration Battery (BMDB), both quick and easy to administer, is composed of four tests: Rey's 15 Words Test, Immediate Visual Memory, Barrage, and Simple Analogies Test. MDB was administered to a further sample of 60 normal subjects and, by multivariate statistical techniques, a probabilistic definition of "normality" and consequently of "non-normality" was given. When applied to pathological and control groups, this probabilistic dichotomic classification yielded groups almost identical to the previous ones.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003704:Dementia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests