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The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a brief cognitive instrument for screening milder forms of cognitive impairment. The present study aimed to analyze the influence of sociodemographic (age, gender, educational level, marital and employment status, geographic region, geographic localization, and residence area) and health variables (subjective memory complaints of the participant and evaluated by the informant, depressive symptoms, and family history of dementia) on the participants' performance on the MoCA. The investigation was carried out in a Portuguese community-based sample of 650 cognitively healthy adults, who were representative of the distribution observed in the Portuguese population. Educational level and age significantly contributed to the prediction of the MoCA scores, explaining 49% of the variance. Regarding health variables, only the subjective memory complaints of the participant showed a small contribution (9%) to the variance on the MoCA scores. This study contributes a useful approach to understanding MoCA performance, stressing the great impact of education and age on scores. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Memory impairment is often present in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) as a result of an inefficient use of learning strategies, sometimes leading to a misdiagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT) is a memory test that controls attention and acquisition, by providing category cues in the learning process. The main goal of this study was to show the usefulness of the FCSRT in the distinction between behavioral (bv-) FTD and AD. Three matched subgroups of participants were considered: bv-FTD (n = 32), AD (n = 32), and a control group of healthy adults (n = 32). Results proved that while AD patients exhibited an overall impairment in FCSRT, bv-FTD subjects showed to benefit more from the controlled learning through category cues. AD patients were 25 times more likely to have an impaired FCSRT. The FCSRT has shown its utility in the distinction between bv-FTD and AD, therefore increasing the diagnostic accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]