From improving social life to opening more job opportunities, bilingualism has all the time had its pros. A latest study has found that speaking two languages each day from a young age may guard you against developing dementia later in life.

Researchers in Germany determined that bilingual people scored higher at learning, memory, language and self-control tests than patients who spoke just one language.

Researchers had earlier found associations between bilingualism and dementia. The brand new study, published within the journal Neurobiology of Aging, evaluated how being bilingual at different life stages impacts cognition and brain structure in older maturity.

“Bilingualism may act as a protective factor against cognitive decline and dementia. Particularly, we observed that speaking 2 languages each day, especially within the early and middle life stages may need a long-lasting effect on cognition and its neural correlates,” the researchers wrote.

They tested 746 people aged 59 to 76 – 40% of them had no memory problems, while the remainder were patients at memory clinics or individuals with complaints of confusion or memory loss.

The participants were evaluated based on a wide range of vocabulary, memory, attention and calculation tests. The tasks included recalling previously named objects, spelling words backward and copying designs presented to them.

The participants who reported using a second language each day once they were aged between 13 and 30 or between 30 and 65 showed higher scores on language, memory, focus, attention and decision-making abilities in comparison with those that weren’t bilingual.

Scientists consider the power of bilinguals to change between two languages is the important thing factor that makes them higher at cognitive skills corresponding to multitasking, managing emotions and self-control, which eventually protects them from dementia.

“Some great benefits of being bilingual don’t stem from the mere knowledge of L2 vocabulary and rules, but reasonably from appropriate and frequent switching between languages, which demands a high cognitive control to inhibit potential interferences between languages,” the researchers added.

The study evaluated only the aspect of using two languages day-after-day for long periods. The researchers warn the positive impact on cognitive abilities may be as a consequence of other aspects, corresponding to the age at which the languages were encoded into memory, or the demographic or life experiences of people that occur to be bilingual.

For individuals who want to delay the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, learning a second language could also be just the training their brain needs.
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Published by Medicaldaily.com