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Differentiation Between Dementia and Depression Among Older Persons: Can the Difference Between Actual and Premorbid Intelligence Be Useful?

Developmental and Lifespan Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium, eva.dierckx{at}vub.ac.be

Sebastiaan Engelborghs, MD, PhD

Department of Neurology and Memory Clinic, Middelheim General Hospital, Antwerp, Belgium, Laboratory of Neurochemistry and Behaviour, Institute Born-Bunge, Department of Nursing Sciences, Faculty of Medicine University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium, Department of Health Care Sciences, University College, Antwerp, Belgium

Rudi De Raedt, PhD

Department of Psychology Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Michael Van Buggenhout, PhD

Laboratory of Neurochemistry and Behaviour, Institute Born-Bunge, Department of Nursing Sciences, Faculty of Medicine University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium, Department of Health Care Sciences, University College, Antwerp, Belgium

Peter Paul De Deyn, MD, PhD

Department of Neurology and Memory Clinic, Middelheim General Hospital (ZNA), Antwerp, Belgium, Laboratory of Neurochemistry and Behaviour, Institute Born-Bunge, Department of Health Care Sciences, University College, Antwerp, Belgium

Gino Verleye, PhD

Department of Social Sciences Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Dominique Verte, PhD

Department of Adult Educational Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

Ingrid Ponjaert-Kristoffersen, PhD

Developmental and Lifespan Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

We wanted to investigate whether the difference between actual and premorbid intelligence can be useful to make an early differentiation between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and depression among elderly. A Dutch version of the National Adult Reading Test (NLV), a measure of premorbid IQ and the Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM), a measure of actual intelligence were administered to patients with mild (34) and moderate (27) AD, depressed elderly (36) and healthy control subjects (51). Logistic regression analyses revealed that intellectual decline (i.e. subtracting NLV percentile score from RCPM percentile score) was only able to predict group membership when moderate AD patients were compared to depressed and healthy individuals. Our results indicate that intellectual decline may not be a concomitant of elderly depression. However, the differentiation between mild AD and elderly depression can not be made by means of the difference between premorbid (NLV) and actual (RCPM) intelligence scores.

Key Words: Alzheimer's disease • elderly depression • mild cognitive impairment • intellectual decline • premorbid intelligence • actual intelligence

Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, Vol. 21, No. 4, 242-249 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0891988708324938


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