[On the relevance of clinical measurements testing psychogeriatric drugs (author's transl)].

The role of experience and the strategies of action acquired during life history in testing psychogeriatric drugs by means of quantitative methods is analyzed and the thus unsatisfactory situation in therapeutical tests of these drugs is stressed: The demand of a proximity to real life of the quantitative methods of measurements leads, on the one hand, to the consequence that because of the complexity of this kind of measurements very differential single-case analyses are necessary. It has been shown, on the other hand, that a comparison of test profiles of the results of different common psychometric tests is not very conclusive. Finally, simple methods of testing are mentioned which are based on information theory controlling complexity with regard to information content and rate of discrimination. A neurophysiological correlate of a special decision process: the latency of P300 in evoked potential measurements involving reactions to rarely occurring signals shows a strong linear dependency from processes of aging. The latency of P300 discriminates additionally between demented and not demented patients in all groups of different ages. It is demanded that in testing psychogeriatric drugs, single case analyses of complex situations should likewise be carried on with greatest relevance to real life as these drugs should be proved to have a specific effect on the cortical neuronal activity in the sense of a shortening of P300 latency.