Montreal cognitive assessment reflects cognitive reserve

BACKGROUND: The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is known to have discriminative power for patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Recently Cognitive Reserve (CR) has been introduced as a factor that compensates cognitive decline. We aimed to assess whether the MoCA reflects CR. Furthermore, we assessed whether there were any differences in the efficacy between the MoCA and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) in reflecting CR. METHODS: MoCA, MMSE, and the Cognitive Reserve Index questionnaire (CRIq) were administered to 221 healthy participants. Normative data and associated factors of the MoCA were identified. Correlation and regression analyses of the MoCA, MMSE and CRIq scores were performed, and the MoCA score was compared with the MMSE score to evaluate the degree to which the MoCA reflected CR. RESULTS: The MoCA reflected total CRIq score (CRI; B = 0.076, P < 0.001), CRI-Education (B = 0.066, P < 0.001), and CRI-Working activity (B = 0.025, P = 0.042), while MMSE reflected total CRI (B = 0.044, P < 0.001) and CRI-Education (B = 0.049, P < 0.001) only. The MoCA differed from the MMSE in the reflection of total CRI (Z = 2.30). CONCLUSION: In this study, we show that the MoCA score reflects CR more sensitively than the MMSE score. Therefore, we suggest that MoCA can be used to assess CR and early cognitive decline. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12877-018-0951-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.