THE MENTAL DETERIORATION BATTERY - NORMATIVE DATA, DIAGNOSTIC RELIABILITY AND QUALITATIVE ANALYSES OF COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT

This study aimed at investigating the clinical usefulness of the Menta l Deterioration Battery (MDB) in the neuropsychological diagnosis and characterization of the dementia syndrome. In this paper, we report: ( a) normative data for various test scores derived from the analysis of performance of 340 normal subjects living in urban areas; (b) an eval uation of the reliability of the single tests and of the battery as a whole in differentiating normal subjects from patients affected by cog nitive deterioration derived from the analysis of performance of 130 n ormal subjects living in rural areas and 134 patients affected by prob able Alzheimer's dementia; (c) a cluster analysis of performances of t he 340 normal subjects in the standardization group to evaluate possib le criteria of homogeneity according to which the various MDB scores t end to aggregate; (d) an analysis of performance profiles of 183 patie nts with right monohemispheric focal lesions, 159 patients with left u nilateral lesions with aphasia and 131 left-lesioned nonaphasic patien ts to evaluate the specificity of the single tests of the battery in d ocumenting a selective impairment of one of the two cerebral hemispher es. Results confirm the reliability of the MBD in discriminating betwe en normal and demented patients and provide indications for use of the battery in differentiating qualitative patterns of cognitive impairme nt.