Recall and recognition subtests of the repeatable battery for the assessment of neuropsychological status and their relationship to biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease

ABSTRACT

Recently, two new recognition subtests for the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) were developed and initially validated in a cohort of older adults who were cognitively intact or classified as amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) or mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The current paper extends that validation by comparing the recall and recognition subtests of the RBANS, including the existing and recently developed scores, to three commonly used biomarkers in AD in an expanded sample from the initial validation. One hundred fifty-four older adults (65 intact, 46 MCI, 43 AD) were administered the RBANS, which included the recently developed subtests for Story Recognition and Figure Recognition (hits, false positives, total correct), as part of a study on memory and biomarkers. Participants also completed magnetic resonance imaging to obtain hippocampal volumes, positron emission tomography to obtain amyloid plaque deposition, and a blood draw to obtain APOE ε4 status. Whereas correlations between recall scores and biomarkers tended to be moderate (average r = ±0.48), these correlations were comparable across the three recognition total scores (average r = ±0.42), but tended to be lower for recognition hits (average r = ±0.28) and false positives (average r = ±0.38). These results further validate the existing and recently developed recognition scores on the RBANS as providing useful information about brain and genetic pathology in older adults with intact and impaired cognitive functioning.

KEYWORDS:

• RBANS
• neuropsychological assessment
• recognition memory
• Alzheimer’s disease
• biomarkers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Although the cortical-subcortical distinction among dementia syndromes continues to be useful clinically and pedagogically in neuropsychology (Lezak et al., 2012; Loring, 2015; Smith & Butts, 2018), in actuality, contemporary neuroimaging studies have established the involvement of large-scale brain networks in most neurodegenerative conditions (e.g., see: Badhwar et al., 2017; Gratwicke et al., 2015; Tartaglia et al., 2011; Teipel et al., 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging [R01AG055428].