Cognitive performance on the mini-mental state examination and the montreal cognitive assessment across the healthy adult lifespan.

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.