Cognitive Performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Across the Healthy Adult Lifespan

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Abstract
Objective: We sought to compare age-related performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) across the adult lifespan in an asymptomatic, presumably normal, sample. Background: The MMSE is the most commonly used brief cognitive screening test; however, the MoCA may be better at detecting early cognitive dysfunction. Methods: We gave the MMSE and MoCA to 254 community-dwelling participants ranging in age from 20 to 89, stratified by decade, and we compared their scores using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. Results: For the total sample, the MMSE and MoCA differed significantly in total scores as well as in visuospatial, language, and memory domains (for all of these scores, PPP<0.001) emerged in the fifth through ninth decades. Conclusions: We conclude that the MoCA may be a better detector of age-related decrements in cognitive performance than the MMSE, as shown in this community-dwelling adult population.

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