CERAD data

Provided by the Duke Aging Center

Overview of CERAD#

The Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease (CERAD) was established in 1986 by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), to standardize procedures for the evaluation and diagnosis of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The neuropsychology battery’s use has increased beyond clinical assessment for AD, to include identification of mild cognitive impairment, differential diagnosis of more recently identified dementias, use in major epidemiological surveys world-wide, and for cognitive assessment of modifiable risk factors for AD. Translation into ~20 different languages and development of norms has facilitated such use.

Additional information on the measures developed and their use in the first 20 years is presented in Fillenbaum GG, van Belle G, Morris JC, Mohs RC, Mirra SS, Davis PC, Tariot PN, Silverman JM, Clark CM, Welsh-Bohmer KA, Heyman A. CERAD (Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease): The first 20 years. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 2008; 4(2): 96-109. PMID: 18631955; PMCID: PMC2808763. doi: 10.1016/j.jalz.2007.08.005. Use of the neuropsychology assessment battery and use over the first 35 years of the program is presented in: Fillenbaum GG, Mohs R. CERAD (Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease) Neuropsychology Assessment Battery: 35 years and counting. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 2023; 93(1): 1-27. PMID: 36938738; PMCID: PMC10175144; doi: 10.3233/JAD-230026 (see Supplement B for norms).

Assessment Instruments & Materials Available for Request#

To request permission to use the CERAD forms, please submit a Permission Request

CERAD Neuropsychological Assessment Battery for Alzheimer’s Disease#

The neuropsychological assessment battery form includes a guide to administration and scoring of each measure, the measure itself when this is appropriate (e.g., the Constructional Praxis designs), and related score sheets. The Boston Naming, and Word List Memory/Learning and Word List Recognition tests require flip books for administration; guidelines for preparing these are available. Administration time is usually 20-30 minutes.

The full CERAD battery includes the following measures:

The core CERAD neuropsychology assessment battery excludes the Boston Naming test and MMSE from the core battery. The core battery includes measures which do not require additional permissions: J1 Verbal Fluency, the three Word List tasks (J4 Word List Learning/Memory, J6 Word List Recall, J7 Word List Recognition), J5/J8 Constructional Praxis copy and recall.

Folstein MF, Folstein SE, McHugh PR. “Mini-Mental State”: a practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. J Psychiatr Res.1975;12:189-198.

Kaplan EF, Goodglass H, Weintraub S. The Boston Naming Test. Boston, MA, Veterans Administration Medical Center, 1978.

Rosen WG, Mohs RC, Davis KL. A new rating scale for Alzheimer’s disease. Am J Psychiat. 1984;141:1356-1364.

The Behavior Rating Scale for Dementia (BRSD)#

This assessment is a standardized instrument for rating behavioral abnormalities in demented or cognitively impaired individuals. Items are scaled according to their frequency of occurrence. The scale is informant-based and consists of 46 items which can be categorized into clinically relevant domains, i.e., depressive features, psychotic symptoms, behavioral dysregulation, irritability/agitation, vegetative features, apathy, aggression, and affective lability. Items marked with a superscript^s allow for reduction to a shorter, 17 item version. The BRSD comes with a comprehensive instruction manual, the psychometric characteristics of the BRSD, scoring forms, scoring tables, instructions to informant and response cards.

Tariot P, Mack JL, Patterson MB, Edland SD, Weiner MF, Fillenbaum G, et al. The Behavior Rating Scale for Dementia of the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease. Am J Psychiatry. 1995;152:1349 –1357.

Mack JL, Patterson MB, Tariot PN. Behavior Rating Scale for Dementia (BRSD): development of test scales and presentation of data for 555 individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. J Geriatr Psych Neurol. 1999;12:211–223.

Translations#

A table of languages which the CERAD Neuropsychological Assessment Battery has been translated into is available below.

The BRSD has been translated into: Arabic (items in a different order), French, Hebrew (subset of 29 items), Japanese, Spanish, and Korean.

Translations of the CERAD Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (CERAD-NAB)