Knowledge of more than one language has been linked by Canadian researchers to a significant delay in the onset of dementia symptoms by as much as four years, compared to monolingual people.
Fluency in two or more languages may be able to stave off cognitive decline because of the mental agility required to juggle them in day-to-day life, said principal investigator Ellen Bialystok, Professor of Psychology at York University and Associate Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at the Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain.
Scientific researches have been examining for a long time how lifestyle items such as physical activity, education and social engagement may build the “cognitive reserve” and a long-lasting healthy brain in later years of life.
The cognitive reserve means enhanced neural plasticity, compensatory use of alternative brain regions, and enriched brain vasculature, which fight against the onset of dementia symptoms (brain degeneration).
Now, the team at the Rotman Research Institute at the Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain, adds bilingualism to these factors. “We are pretty dazzled by the results,” said Bialystok: “Our study found that speaking two languages throughout one’s life appears to be associated with a delay in the onset of symptoms of dementia by four years compared to those who speak one language.”
The same team had shown that bilingualism enhances attention and cognitive control in both children and older adults. Now, they examined the diagnostic records of 184 patients of Baycrest’s Sam and Ida Ross Memory Clinic between 2002 and 2005, which presented cognitive complaints.
The study group compassed 91 monolingual persons and 93 bilingual ones, the other language spoken besides English being Polish, Yiddish, German, Romanian and Hungarian.
132 patients met criteria for probable Alzheimer‘s (the most common form of dementia, which is highly genetic); the other 52 presented other dementias.
The researchers used data of Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores (a measure of general cognitive functioning), years of education and occupation. The MMSE scores were the same for the monolingual and bilingual groups at their initial visit to the clinic, pointing comparable levels of impairment.
The team determined that the onset of dementia symptoms in the monolingual group occurred at the mean age of 71.4, while the bilingual group was 75.5 years. The difference remained even after considering the possible effect of cultural differences, immigration, formal education, employment and even gender as influences in the results.
“There are no pharmacological interventions that are this dramatic,” says Dr. Freedman, who is Head of the Division of Neurology, and Director of the Memory Clinic at Baycrest.
“El hombre es tantas veces hombre
cuanto es el número de lenguas que ha aprendido”
- Carlos I de España
http://rafaelminuesa.wordpress.com/category/languages/
Fluency in two or more languages may be able to stave off cognitive decline because of the mental agility required to juggle them in day-to-day life, said principal investigator Ellen Bialystok, Professor of Psychology at York University and Associate Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at the Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain.
Scientific researches have been examining for a long time how lifestyle items such as physical activity, education and social engagement may build the “cognitive reserve” and a long-lasting healthy brain in later years of life.
The cognitive reserve means enhanced neural plasticity, compensatory use of alternative brain regions, and enriched brain vasculature, which fight against the onset of dementia symptoms (brain degeneration).
Now, the team at the Rotman Research Institute at the Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain, adds bilingualism to these factors. “We are pretty dazzled by the results,” said Bialystok: “Our study found that speaking two languages throughout one’s life appears to be associated with a delay in the onset of symptoms of dementia by four years compared to those who speak one language.”
The same team had shown that bilingualism enhances attention and cognitive control in both children and older adults. Now, they examined the diagnostic records of 184 patients of Baycrest’s Sam and Ida Ross Memory Clinic between 2002 and 2005, which presented cognitive complaints.
The study group compassed 91 monolingual persons and 93 bilingual ones, the other language spoken besides English being Polish, Yiddish, German, Romanian and Hungarian.
132 patients met criteria for probable Alzheimer‘s (the most common form of dementia, which is highly genetic); the other 52 presented other dementias.
The researchers used data of Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores (a measure of general cognitive functioning), years of education and occupation. The MMSE scores were the same for the monolingual and bilingual groups at their initial visit to the clinic, pointing comparable levels of impairment.
The team determined that the onset of dementia symptoms in the monolingual group occurred at the mean age of 71.4, while the bilingual group was 75.5 years. The difference remained even after considering the possible effect of cultural differences, immigration, formal education, employment and even gender as influences in the results.
“There are no pharmacological interventions that are this dramatic,” says Dr. Freedman, who is Head of the Division of Neurology, and Director of the Memory Clinic at Baycrest.
“El hombre es tantas veces hombre
cuanto es el número de lenguas que ha aprendido”
- Carlos I de España
http://rafaelminuesa.wordpress.com/category/languages/