In addition to having many social, psychological and lifestyle benefits, being bilingual has many benefits for the brain. Some research finds some interesting facts, such as the fact that bilingualism allows for faster recovery from a stroke and helps delay the onset of dementia.
In fact, more and more research indicates that bilingualism is a way to delay or prevent Alzheimer’s disease; In this sense, Canadian research (Neuropsychologia, 2018) shows that bilingualism leads to changes in brain structure that are linked to resistance to Alzheimer’s disease and mild. cognitive decline.
- Previous studies have found interesting data on this topic.
- One.
- Published in the journal Neurology in 2013.
- Reported that speaking two languages can delay Alzheimer’s disease by up to 4.
- 5 years; Its authors suggest that bilingualism can contribute to the development of certain areas of the brain that control executive function.
- Involving basic psychological processes.
- Such as attention.
Although such studies only emphasized the hypothesis, another subsequent study used magnetic resonance imaging data to examine the regions of the brain associated with the memory known to be affected in Alzheimer’s disease and its precursor, mild cognitive impairment (DCL).
According to the authors, this is the first study that not only evaluated the brain areas responsible for language and cognition, but also related the appearance of these areas with memory functioning in a group of people with Alzheimer’s disease.
For the experiment, the researchers examined the brain and memory function of:
It should be noted that the researchers observed the so-called medium temporal lobes, which are fundamental in memory formation, as well as the frontal areas of the brain. Researchers explain that in areas related to cognitive control and language, multilingual patients with DCL and those with Alzheimer’s disease had a thicker cortex than monolingual patients. The results were largely replicated among participants born in Canada with DCL, ruling out immigration as a possible factor of confusion.
Thus, this study supports the hypothesis that speaking two languages is a protective factor in specific regions of the brain and can increase cortical thickness and density of gray matter. In addition, these results are amplified by demonstrating that these structural differences can be observed in the brains of multilingual ones. patients with Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment.
In addition, the results contribute to research that indicates that speaking more than one language is one of the lifestyle factors that improve cognitive reserve, a kind of box in which the brain’s ability to face a challenge based on knowledge of alternative methods to perform a task. .
We want to make a special mention of the benefits of bilingualism to the brain in order to understand more deeply why it is so important:
As we have just seen, being bilingual has many advantages beyond what may seem obvious, such as improving the program or being able to communicate effectively when traveling abroad or receiving people from other countries, it is certainly worth a try.