Psychological test performance and sedation thresholds of elderly dements, depressives and depressives with incipient brain change

Abstract

SynopsisAs expected, dements, depressives and patients with a mixed psychopathology were differentiated from one another on the sedation threshold measure and on a number of psychological tests. In depressives responding to treatment significant changes in physiological and psychological measures, which had been reported in an earlier study, could not be replicated except for an increase of psychomotor speed. In the present sample of patients there were significant correlations between various psychological measures and between them and the levels of the sedation threshold, suggesting that sedation thresholds and psychological tests measured related cerebral functions. Evidence obtained from the earlier investigations to the effect that cerebral age changes short of those occurring in dementia may facilitate the occurrence of depression in late life was only weakly confirmed by the replication study.