Beyond the cut-offs: A Bayesian approach to the use of Montreal Cognitive Assessment as a screening tool for Mild Cognitive Impairment and Dementia

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a widespread and concise screening tool for the assessment of cognitive impairment that has had a significant impact on the evaluation of age-related cognitive decline. Since 2010 there have been a great number of national validations of the MoCA. The most important contribution of this huge corpus of research has been the indication of special cutoff values to be used in clinical practice for detecting patients with dementia and mild cognitive impairment. The present chapter aims to describe the most widely disseminated uses of the MoCA in aging clinical practice and a cutting-edge approach to using the MoCA in the assessment of minor and major neurocognitive disorders based on Bayesian statistics.