Differences in Luria-Nebraska neuropsychological battery scores among normal and categories of hospitalized depressed adolescents

Neuropsychological differences among normal (n=31) and depressed (n=24) adolescents were explored with the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery. This test was individually administered in a blind fashion to all subjects and is designed to evaluate brain processes through 14 sub-scale scores. Depressed patients were diagnosed into reactive or biologically depressed sub-groups utilizing DMS-III criteria; the Dexamethasone Suppression Test; and urinary MHPG values. Significant differences were found among mean scores across normals and all depressed patients in the motor, rhythm, tactile, visual, receptive, expressive, writing, reading, math, memory, intelligence and pathognomonic subscales with the depressed group scoring less well on all scales. No differences were detected on the right or left hemisphere scales. Only a few significant differences were found among groups based on diagnostic procedure; however, most of the t-values were all in the same direction, indicating that reactive depressives tend to do better on each subscale when compared with the biologically depressed as determined by the Dexamethasone Suppression Test.