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The Rao’s Brief Repeatable Battery and Stroop test: normative values with age, education and gender corrections in an Italian population

Department of Neurology, University of Florence, 50134 Florence, Italy, mariapia.amato{at}unifi.it

E Portaccio

Department of Neurology, University of Florence, 50134 Florence, Italy

B Goretti

Department of Neurology, University of Florence, 50134 Florence, Italy

V Zipoli

Department of Neurology, University of Florence, 50134 Florence, Italy

L Ricchiuti

Department of Neurology, University of Bari, 70100 Bari, Italy

M F De Caro

Department of Neurology, University of Bari, 70100 Bari, Italy

F Patti

Multiple Sclerosis Centre, University of Catania, 95126 Catania, Italy

R Vecchio

Multiple Sclerosis Centre, University of Catania, 95126 Catania, Italy

S Sorbi

Department of Neurology, University of Florence, 50134 Florence, Italy

M Trojano

Department of Neurology, University of Bari, 70100 Bari, Italy

The Brief Repeatable Battery of Neuropsychological Tests (BRB) is by far the most widely used instrument to estimate cognitive dysfunction in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. However, the paucity of normative data currently limits its applicability. We administered the BRB to 200 healthy subjects to obtain normative values. Moreover, we assessed the influence of demographic factors on the test scores and calculated corrections for these relevant factors. To test executive functions not explored by the BRB, we also included the Stroop word-color task (ST). Higher educational level was associated with better performance on all the tests, except for the world list generation (WLG) and the ST, considering version A, and on Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT), Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) and Selective Reminding Test-Delayed (SRT-D), considering version B. Females performed better than males on the WLG considering version A, and on the SRT-Long Term Storage (SRT-LTS) and SRT-Consistent Long Term Retrieval (SRT-CLTR) considering version B. Increasing age was associated with worse performance on the ST in version A, and on the SRT-LTS, SRT-CLTR and WLG in version B. Our data can improve the applicability of the BRB for both clinical and research purposes.

Key Words: Brief Repeatable Battery • cognitive impairment • multiple sclerosis • normative values • Stroop test

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