By: Inas Essa
It is widely believed that active thinkers have better opportunities to maintain good brain health over time. People who keep their minds engaged in recent issues, keep good communication channels with others, have good nutrition, leisure habits, level of education, and keep learning throughout their time. Besides this, could being bilingual have a good effect on brain health and slow down brain aging? That is what a recent study from HSE University in Russia and North Umbria University in the UK has investigated.
Bilingualism and Mental Health
Needless to say, scientific advances have done well in helping people live longer but not always healthier, as several diseases and disorders can creep into the body and brain with aging. For example, the number of cases of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases has grown lately because of the increased life span.
While massive research has studied the link between physical health ad better brain function, this new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, shed light on the role of bilingualism in maintaining good brain health. Researchers found that bilingualism can slow down and relieve age-related changes in the human brain.
The researchers investigated how the speed of cognitive aging, which is linked to brain bad performance—overall information-processing speed decrease, short-term and episodic memory deterioration, and decline in control over language skills, executive, and visuospatial functions—could be slowed down by strengthening neural networks through bilingualism. They mention that the more complex the neural networks are, the greater a person’s cognitive function is and the milder any age-related changes will be.
In the recent study, the research team experimented with 63 healthy adults aged 60 or above who had no history of psychiatric or neurodegenerative impairments. They were chosen to have at least knowledge of a second language, no matter how fluent they are; all of them had to mention how long they had known this second language, how often and where they used it, and how fluent they were in it.
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How Could Cognitive Decline be Slowed Down?
The participants were presented with a “flanker task”, which is used to measure inhibitory executive control through a set of tests to assess selective attention and inhibitory function. In this task, the target is positioned in the center and is flanked by nontarget stimuli. Then, the participant is asked to press the left or right arrow key according to the target’s direction.
Results showed that, in the most difficult test—an incongruent situation, in which the target and side arrows point in different directions—bilingualism did well. Not only being bilingual, but also participants’ level and how long they have been learning and practicing the language played a key role. The longer people had studied a second language and the more fluent they were, the better they performed in the experiment.
The researchers have explained these results by noting that bilingual speakers normally face similar conflicts in daily life, in which they must make choices and switch between two linguistic systems, which helps them keep their mind sharp and better affect cognitive function.
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Language Vs Physical Activity
“Unlike other factors that shape cognitive reserve, bilingualism is unique in that it is constantly present in our lives,” Said Federico Gallo, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE University Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. He adds: “We can take up and give up physical exercise, go on one diet or another, or change jobs, but the language remains with us all the time. We communicate, watch movies, and read books, and the language centers are constantly working in our mind.”
This means that bilingualism’s benefits on cognitive function might be stronger than those of other known factors, like physical activity, etc.
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