Have any peer-reviewed studies assessed the cognitive abilities of former President Trump?

1. The single formal test reported publicly was a clinical screening, not a peer‑reviewed study

The most concrete, repeatedly documented item is that Trump underwent the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) as part of a clinical physical, and that media coverage of that event produced systematic attention and commentary; the MoCA was described in press briefings and later analyzed in medical‑journal reporting about media dissemination of the test after the January 2018 evaluation ^[1], and scholars have documented a surge of public interest in the MoCA after news of Trump’s exam ^[2]. The MoCA is an established screening tool for mild cognitive impairment but the administration of that clinical test to a sitting president and disclosure of a score in a medical briefing is not the same as a peer‑reviewed research study assessing cognition in a controlled, published way ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Experts warn screening scores don’t equate to definitive cognitive research findings

Developers of the MoCA and other neurologists have emphasized that such screens are designed to detect possible mild impairment and are not measures of overall intelligence or fine‑grained cognitive profiling; Ziad Nasreddine, the test creator, has noted the MoCA was not intended to be equated with IQ tests, a limitation that undercuts claims that a clinical “30/30” score settles questions about broader cognitive ability ^[4]. Media stories and opinion pieces that conflate a clinical screening with proof of cognitive fitness therefore outpace what the instrument and the public reporting can support ^{[4] [1]}.

3. Academic commentary exists, but it’s different from peer‑reviewed clinical assessment

Prominent scholars and commentators have written about Trump’s cognition and behavior—Howard Gardner’s longform reflections, for example, explore cognitive styles and public appeal but are interpretive, not clinical trial data ^[3]. Wikipedia and other summaries cite academic syntheses characterizing Trump’s personality traits across multiple studies, yet those syntheses aggregate personality research and are not equivalent to a peer‑reviewed clinical study explicitly testing Trump’s cognitive functions in a research protocol ^[5]. In short, scholarship has engaged the question from personality and political psychology angles, rather than producing clinical, peer‑reviewed tests of his cognition.

4. Indirect peer‑reviewed work exists on related questions but not on Trump’s own cognitive test performance

There are peer‑reviewed social‑science studies that link cognitive ability to political attitudes and support for leaders—including work examining cognitive ability, authoritarianism, and support for candidates like Trump—but these investigate voters’ cognition and ideological dynamics, not the subjectivity of the candidate’s own neurocognitive status ^[6]. Likewise, peer‑reviewed medical literature has examined how news media disseminated the MoCA items after Trump’s 2018 exam ^{[1] [2]}, but that is research on media effects and clinical dissemination, not a clinical trial measuring the former president’s cognitive domains under research conditions.

5. What the record does not show — and what cannot be ruled out from available reporting

None of the supplied sources document a formal, peer‑reviewed clinical research paper that submitted Trump’s cognitive testing to the standards of academic publication (hypothesis, methods, peer review, deidentified data or consent for research use), and the available materials instead show clinical briefings, media analysis, expert op‑eds, and voter‑focused cognitive research ^{[1] [2] [3] [6]}. It is possible that other peer‑reviewed work exists outside the sampled sources, but within this reporting there is no example of a peer‑reviewed study whose primary objective was to clinically assess Donald Trump’s cognitive abilities.