Normative Data of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment in the Greek Population and Parkinsonian Dementia

Abstract

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a brief cognitive instrument for the measurement of dementia. The aim of the present study is to provide normative data for the MoCA test in the Greek speaking population and to measure its validity in a clinical group of parkinsonian dementia participants. A total of 710 healthy Greek speaking participants and 19 parkinsonian dementia participants took part in the study. Both, the MoCA test and a neuropsychological test battery (digit span, semantic verbal fluency, phonemic verbal fluency, Color Trails Test) were administered to the normative and clinical samples. The test was found to correlate with all neuropsychological tests used in the test battery and it showed high discriminant validity (optimal screening cutoff point = 21, sensitivity = 0.82, specificity = 0.90) in the parkinsonian dementia participants. Further research is needed to use it in larger clinical samples and in different neurological diseases.

Keywords: Assessment; Dementia; Movement disorders; Norms/normative studies; Parkinson's disease.