A note on the clinical use of the Hunt-Minnesota Test for Organic Brain Damage.

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Abstract
At the time of writing, the Hunt-Minnesota Test for Organic Brain Damage had been used routinely for 9 mos. on 68 neuropsychiatric patients. The great majority of these cases were diagnostic problems without clinically obvious deterioration but with suggestive histories or equivocal neuralogic signs of brain damage. In many instances, however, the psychologic examiner was unaware of the neurologic status of the patient. Performance on the test is expressed in terms of a T-Score (a standard score with the means of normals adjusted to 50 and their standard deviation adjusted to 10). A T-Score over 66 indicates organic brain damage. In 10.3% of these cases the score and clinical evaluation disagreed. There was agreement in 79.4% of the cases, and in 10.3%the test results were invalid because of lack of cooperation on the part of the patient, inadequate vocabulary level, and the like. The degree of deterioration is not expressed precisely by the T-Score. The test yields only probability estimates, and degree is somewhat dependent upon age and the vocabulary status of the patient. In general, the test is maximally efficient only within the age range of 20-55 yrs., and within the vocabulary range of 12 to 32 words as scored by the vocabulary section of the test. Records of persons with age or vocabulary scores outside these ranges must be interpreted with caution. Likewise, records are likely to be invalid in the case of persons who are severely agitated or depressed, who are inattentive or resistant to testing. The examiner must be the judge of the validity of any given test record. The T-Score usually underestimates the degree of damage in persons injured prior to attaining intellectual maturity, and, hence, is not particularly applicable to cases of birth injury or other early developmental defects. The deterioration indicated by a high T-Score is predominantly of organic origin. In regard to traumatic head injury, evidence is accumulating which suggests a lowering of T-Scores with clinical recovery. It is understandable why T-Scores of deterioration may not agree with the initial clinical evaluation of acase. Extensive cerebral damage can often lead to in- '' 1deterioration without noticeable neurologic evi- 1 smmall lesions in the neuraxis may give excellent ''[center dot]x ., idings without much observable evidence of in- 1 :i?i! i [center dot]''[center dot]pairmeut. Disagreement between neurologic .1 > :i :l,s and deterioration tests results does not necessarily indicate error on the part of either method.

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