The latest Alzheimer’s research offers some good news for bilingual individuals: speaking two or more languages may delay dementia symptoms.
The new study, published in the journal Neurology, examined 648 people with various types of dementia, including:
- Vascular dementia, a decline in thinking skills caused by inadequate blood flow to the brain
- Frontotemporal dementia, an umbrella term for a group of disorders caused by cell degeneration in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, which can lead to changes in behavior and personality or impaired language or muscle control
- Dementia with Lewy bodies, a progressive dementia that leads to a decline in thinking, reasoning and independent function
- Alzheimer’s disease
Participants who spoke two or more languages developed dementia symptoms later than those who spoke only one language; in fact, symptoms were delayed by as many as four years!
So why would bilingualism impact the progression of dementia? Study co-author Dr. Thomas Bak said, “Bilingualism can be seen as successful brain training, contributing to cognitive reserve, which can help delay dementia.”
Cognitive reserve refers to the brain’s level of resistance to disease or injury. Those with greater cognitive reserve, then, will be better equipped to stave off the effects of dementia for a longer period of time.
We can increase our cognitive reserve by staying mentally active and engaged; for example, opportunities for continuing education, learning a musical instrument, or, as the study suggests, learning how to speak another language.
Similar studies have also found a correlation between bilingualism and delayed dementia symptoms, adding weight to the study’s results. It’s certainly a good incentive to dust of those foreign language skills we learned in school and work toward fluency.