WASHINGTON, D.C. — Want to protect against the effects of Alzheimer's? Learn another language.
That's the takeaway from recent brain research, which shows that bilingual people's brains function better and for longer after developing the disease.
Psychologist Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues at York University in Toronto recently tested about 450 patients who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Half of these patients were bilingual, and half spoke only one language.
While all the patients had similar levels of cognitive impairment, the researchers found that those who were bilingual had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's about four years later, on average, than those who spoke just one language. And the bilingual people reported their symptoms had begun about five years later than those who spoke only one language.
"What we've been able to show is that in these patients… all of whom have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and are all at the same level of impairment, the bilinguals on average are four to five years older — which means that they've been able to cope with the disease," Bialystok said.
She presented her findings today (Feb. 18) here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Some results of this research were published in the Nov. 9, 2010 issue of the journal Neurology.
CT brain scans of the Alzheimer's patients showed that, among patients who are functioning at the same level, those who are bilingual have more advanced brain deterioration than those who spoke just one language. But this difference wasn't apparent from the patients' behaviors, or their abilities to function. The bilingual people acted like monolingual patients whose disease was less advanced.
Learning a Second Language Protects Against Alzheimer's
