ORIGINAL ARTICLE The Brief Repeatable Battery: psychometrics and normative values with age, education and gender corrections in a Serbian population D. Obradovic • M. Petrovic • I. Antanasijevic • J. Marinkovic • T. Stojanovic • S. Obradovic Received: 8 January 2012 / Accepted: 12 April 2012 / Published online: 3 May 2012 Ó Springer-Verlag 2012 Abstract Cognitive impairment is present in up to 65 % of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. The Brief Repeatable Battery of neuropsychological tests (BRB) is one of the most used neuropsychological tools for cognitive assess- ment in MS. However, relative lack of normative data limits its application in research and clinical practice. In order to obtain normative data for a Serbian population, we administered the BRB version A to 140 healthy subjects and assessed the influence of demographic factors such as gender, age, and education on the tests’ scores. We also calculated corrections for these factors. Higher education was associated with better performance on all the tests. Age influenced all the tests, except the word list generation, higher age being associated with worse performance on all other tests. Women performed worse on the paced auditory serial addition test 2, no other gender differences were observed. Our data obtained for the Serbian population could further improve use of the BRB in clinical practice and for the research purposes, establishing cognitive evaluation as a part of standard neurological examination of MS patients. Keywords Brief Repeatable Battery  Neuropsychological testing  Cognition  Cognitive impairment  Multiple sclerosis  Normative values Introduction Cognitive impairment is present in up to 65 % of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients [1–3]. Neuropsychological studies have shown that cognitive impairment can occur early in disease course [4, 5] and tends to progress over time [4, 6]. The most often affected cognitive domains are memory, complex attention, information processing speed, and executive functions [1, 2]. Etiology of cognitive impair- ment remains controversial [7] as well as its relation to disability and disease duration [1, 3, 8]. However, in relation to quality of life, social and professional func- tioning of MS patients, cognitive impairment might have considerable, even dramatic impact [9–11]. Having in mind the incidence and the importance of cognitive impairment in MS and in order to obtain a useful, reliable, clinical, and research tool for cognitive evaluation of MS patients, the American National MS Society developed the Brief Repeatable Battery (BRB) [12], which was later modified by Rao et al. [1], identifying five tests as the most sensitive tests for MS cognitive impairment. These tests are the selective remanding test (SRT), the 10/36 spatial recall test (SPART), the symbol digit modalities test (SDMT), the D. Obradovic (&) Clinic of Neurology, University of Defence, Faculty of Medicine of the Military Medical Academy, Crnotravska 17, 11 000 Belgrade, Serbia e-mail: dena.obradovic@gmail.com M. Petrovic  T. Stojanovic Clinic of Psychiatry, Military Medical Academy, 11 000 Belgrade, Serbia I. Antanasijevic Welfare Center, 37000 Paracin, Serbia J. Marinkovic Department of Statistics, Faculty of Medicine, 11 000 Belgrade, Serbia S. Obradovic Clinic of Emergency Medicine, University of Defence, Faculty of Medicine of the Military Medical Academy, 11 000 Belgrade, Serbia 123 Neurol Sci (2012) 33:1369–1374 DOI 10.1007/s10072-012-1099-5