Breaking geographic and language barriers in neuropsychology: online administration of MoCA in diverse populations

Traditional in-person neuropsychological tests remain inaccessible and not adapted to individuals in remote geographical locations and linguistically diverse populations. We aimed to make neuropsychological tests more accessible and adapted to diverse populations by leveraging the internet. We examined the feasibility, discriminability, and generalizability of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment-video conferencing version (MoCA-VC) across geographically and linguistically diverse populations. We tested 250 participants from 120+ locations in the USA and Israel, using a standardized MoCA-VC protocol in English, Hebrew, or Arabic. Performance followed expected significant trends across language-speaking cohorts: young adults (YA)>older adults (OA)>people with Parkinson’s Disease (PwP), confirming discriminative abilities. However, while the YA groups performed similarly across the three language-speaking cohorts, the OA and PwP Arabic-speaking cohorts demonstrated significantly lower scores, indicating limited generalizability. While these findings support MoCA-VC’s feasibility and discriminability, they underscore the need to adapt online cognitive assessments across geographical locations and languages, ensuring greater accessibility worldwide.