At that time, it was known that socially and physically active older adults tended to enjoy a measure of protection from d

Author : greensameblue

Publish Date : 2021-01-09 16:19:13

For a groundbreaking 2010 study, a team of Canadian researchers explored the associations between bilingualism and Alzheimer’s disease.

At that time, it was known that socially and physically active older adults tended to enjoy a measure of protection from dementia, and the study team was interested to learn if the cognitive demands of bilingualism — the ability of speaking and understanding two or more languages — offered any similar protections.

To find out, they collected data on more than 200 people recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They found that people who spoke two or more languages developed Alzheimer’s symptoms an average of five years later in life than those who spoke only one language. This time gap persisted even after the study team controlled for occupation, education level, country of birth, and other variables. (Later follow-up work has supported these findings.)

“The brain needs exercise just like the body, or it winnows away.”

How could bilingualism protect the brain from dementia? The study authors highlight something called “cognitive reserve,” which they describe as the capacity of the brain to maintain proper functioning despite the onslaught of disease. “[Bilingualism] appears to contribute to cognitive reserve, which acts to compensate for the effects of accumulated neuropathology,” they write.

The brain is an organ, not a muscle. But several decades of brain research have revealed that, much like a muscle, the brain appears to benefit from effortful training. Once a person reaches and surpasses middle age, that kind of training may be necessary to prevent the sort of weakening and wasting that, for different reasons, also threatens the muscles. “The brain needs exercise just like the body, or it winnows away,” says Catherine Caldwell-Harris, PhD, a bilingualism researcher and associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University. “The phrase use it or lose it — there’s a lot of neuroscience behind that.”

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Caldwell-Harris says that almost any novel activity — from taking up a new hobby to visiting a new place — seems to engage and challenge the brain in ways that can improve its functioning. But learning and using a second language may be the ultimate form of brain training. “Learning a new language is a type of all-demanding activity that involves almost all aspects of cognitive functioning,” she says. “It’s as complicated as chess or any science, but it also involves social interaction and activation and all of those processes.”

Language training not only seems to make the brain healthier and stronger, but it may also helpfully reshape the way its owner experiences and interacts with the world.

Bilingualism and the brain’s executive functions
The brain is not a static organ. It’s constantly changing in response to the tasks it performs. Many of those changes are measurable — both in terms of the brain’s electrical activity and in the actual mass and density of its cortical structures.

For a 2019 study in Frontiers in Neuroscience, Italian researchers measured the effects of language training on the brains of healthy older adults between 59 and 79. After just four months of studying English, the people in the study scored significantly better on two research-backed measures of brain health and acuity: tests of global cognition and functional connectivity.

“Learning a foreign language is one of the non-pharmacological cognitive interventions that can boost cognition in young and older adults,” says Giovanna Bubbico, PhD, first author of the study and a postdoctoral research at the University of California, Irvine and D’Annunzio University of Chieti–Pescara in Italy.

“The phrase use it or lose it — there’s a lot of neuroscience behind that.”

Unlike other novel activities — the cognitive benefits of which tend to fade once a person’s brain has gotten the hang of things — a second language never stops challenging the brain in helpful ways. “A second language forces the brain to switch between two languages — inhibiting one and favoring the other — depending on the context,” Bubbico says. The cerebral processes involved in this sort of context-monitoring and switching seems to beef up the brain’s executive functions, or its ability to plan, concentrate, make decisions, and engage in other important aspects of cognition, she explains.

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