Practical application of the CERAD test battery in screening for neuropsychological dementia

The CERAD neuropsychological test battery is becoming the standard measure for screening cognitive deficits associated with dementia. The seven subtes ts of the CERAD battery (Mini-Mental State Examination or MMSE, verbal flue ncy, Modified Boston Naming Test or MBNT, construction ability, learning of word lists, recall, and recognition), a short test of crystallized intelli gence (vocabulary test or WST), and a simple test of visuomotor tracking (n umber relation test-G or ZVT-G) were applied to 30 healthy control subjects , 49 depressed patients, and 98 mildly to severely demented patients. All s ubtests of the CERAD battery separated controls from mildly demented patien ts. Overall, depressed patients scored between controls and mildly demented patients. Score differences between depressed patients and mildly demented patients were significant for MMSE, learning and recall of the word list, verbal fluency and MBNT. This paper contains a profile sheet for the CERAD battery developed according to published norms that allows rapid transforma tion of test results into a scaled graphical representation.