Neuropsychological assessment
Depression
The battery was administered to each participant in the same order and in two single test sessions and parallel forms of tests were administered to check the learning effect in a testing session lasting from 30 to 40 min. The psychologist was not informed about the treatment, the BR-CT and placebo were of the same color, and neither the subject nor the researcher knew which was the placebo and which was the BR-CT The following validated tests were administered 90 min after taking BR-CT or placebo:The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) which includes the assessment of immediate (RAVLT_I) and delayed recalls (RAVLT_D) to evaluate short-term and long-term verbal memory, respectively [The Digit Span Forward (Digit Span F) and Backward (Digit Span B) tasks to evaluate the memory span: the verbal memory of short-term digits and working memory standardized for Italian population [The Symbol Digit Modality Test (SDMT) to measure attention and processing speed [The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) for a fast screening of the main frontal skills such as abstract reasoning, mental flexibility, motor programming, executive control of action, and inhibitory control [The Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT/FAS), used as a measure of lexical assets, tests the ability to access the lexicon and cognitive flexibility [The self-assessment questionnaires to investigate mood included the 2nd edition of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) [The Retrospective Prospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) which is a self-report questionnaire that provides information for both the prospective (PRMQ-P) and retrospective (PRMQ-R) scales [