Bilingualism Protects Against Dementia According To A Study

Various studies indicate that bilingualism protects against dementia, based on experimental data. Research has been carried out in various parts of the world that reach the same conclusion: learning a second language keeps the brain younger for longer.

In recent years, several studies have been carried out which show that bilingualism protects against dementia, in particular Alzheimer’s disease. One of the most prominent investigations was carried out by Dr. Ellen Bialystok, a professor at the University of York in Toronto.

Bialystok and her team concluded that learning or speaking another language can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s for up to five years. His research was based on data from 200 people diagnosed with this disease, who were followed through medical records.

It is not the first time that Dr. Bialystok has found that bilingualism protects against dementia. In 2007 he had already carried out a similar investigation with 184 patients and the conclusions were the same. Not only for her, but for all experts, learning a new language is one of the best brain gymnastics that can be done.

Bilingualism protects against dementia

Learning and using another language involves the implementation of several complex functions of the brain. Dr. Bialystok points out that those who speak two or more languages ​​must constantly make decisions about how they should express an idea.

In more precise terms, this means that bilingual people are constantly exercising the executive functions of the brain. Thanks to those parallelism exercises that are done between the vocabularies and structures of each language, the brain performs a kind of gymnastics.

The executive functions not only allow the contrast and translation between the two languages, but also give rise to the development of other skills and functions. Bilingualism protects against dementia, but at the same time it makes us smarter and more adept at performing other intellectual tasks.

For all the above, Bialystok concluded that bilingualism modifies the way our brain works, making it more efficient. It is probably this change that delays the onset of Alzheimer’s and other dementias, by an average of four to five years.

Bilingualism and cognition

Dr. Marco Calabria, professor of the master’s degree in neuropsychology at the Open University of Catalonia, has also carried out research on the relationship between bilingualism and the maintenance or deterioration of brain functions. He argues that the brain of a bilingual person is different from that of a monolingual person.

Calabria indicates that a bilingual is not like the sum of two monolinguals. What a person who speaks two languages ​​develops is a kind of supervisory function, a control that guides the mental and motor action that they must develop, when speaking in one or the other language.

Likewise, it points out that the learning of a second language operates as a cognitive reserve. It is not enough simply to learn the language, but it is necessary to practice it for several years, so that it becomes a protective factor against dementia and cognitive deterioration.

Cognitive impairment and intelligence

Professor Thomas Bak is a member of the Center for Cognitive Aging and Cognitive Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh , Scotland, and the author of research that was published in the Annals of Neurology . It is another of the researchers who agrees that learning a second language prevents dementias and slows cognitive decline.

Bak has an investigative model that is considered unique in the world. What he and his team did was take databases of 835 people, who had been given an intelligence test at age 11. The same test was repeated at the age of 73. All the members of the sample spoke English as their native language.

In the second test, 262 people reported being able to communicate in two languages. Among them, 195 had learned the second language before the age of 18 and 65 after that age. The results showed that all bilingual participants also had greater cognitive abilities than the others, as well as greater intellectual dexterity.

Bak has indicated that learning a second language definitely slows down cognitive decline. He also points out that this effect is the same in bilinguals and multilinguals, that is, the brain changes in the same way if we learn two or five languages. All of these studies show that it is worth the effort to learn another language, regardless of age.