Bilingualism Boosts Brain's Resilience
According to new research, multilingual speakers can keep the symptoms of dementia at bay for an average of four years longer than monolingual speakers. Regularly speaking multiple languages seems to bolster skills that expand the brain's cognitive reserve, which appears to help bilingual individuals as they get older. "Speaking two languages isn't going to do anything to dodge the bullet" of developing dementia, but more cognitive reserve means the "same as the reserve tank in a car—once the brain runs out of fuel, it can go a little farther," says York University Researcher Ellen Bialystok. Three cognitive studies involving 150 monolingual and bilingual people between 30 and 80 years old found that in both middle and old age, bilingual subjects were more capable of blocking out distracting information than monolingual speakers in a series of computerized tests. Bialystok says other research also indicates improved performance from bilingual people on tests requiring cognitive control. Another study involving brain scans of bilingual and monolingual Alzheimer's patients of the same age and stage of the disease revealed that the bilingual subjects' brains appeared to be more damaged. This suggests that speaking more than one language does not delay the disease process, but rather helps subjects handle memory deficits better, Bialystok says. It is unknown whether it is advantageous for people to learn more than one language if they do not speak them fluently or almost every day. The age at which a second language needs to be acquired in order to better shield against dementia is also not known.
From "Building a More Resilient Brain"
Wall Street Journal (NY) (10/12/10) Wang, Shirley S.
Source: ATA Newsbriefs - October 2010
