Keep your brain sharp — it’s the most important tool you have to stave off mental decline.
Games, puzzles and crosswords have been shown to lower the risk of dementia, a neurodegenerative condition that affects nearly 7 million Americans.
Studies also suggest that speaking another language can do more than impress your date when you’re ordering Mexican food — it may delay the onset of dementia.
“What is emerging consistently is that older adults who speak more than one language have clear advantages against dementia,” Natalie Phillips, a psychology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, told New Scientist this week.
Scientists have known about the purported link between bilingualism and dementia for some time, since Canadian psychologist Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues examined the records of 184 patients with dementia in 2007 and found that those who were bilingual showed symptoms four years later than their monolingual peers.
It was unclear if other factors were at play, but a 2013 study out of India seemed to confirm the findings.
Bilingual people developed dementia symptoms 4.5 years later than monolingual people regardless of their occupation, sex, education and residence.
But why that might be the case has puzzled researchers — until recently.
Phillips and her colleagues used advanced neuroimaging techniques to determine that bilingualism seems to help keep dementia at bay in three major ways.
First, it boosts brain reserves, making it capable of sustaining more damage before reaching its breaking point.
Second, it benefits cognitive reserve, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and maintain cognitive function despite aging-related change or damage.
“If you think of brain reserve versus cognitive reserve, it’s like comparing a hardware advantage with a software advantage,” Phillips said.
When bilinguals hear a word in one language, their brains automatically activate associations for similar words in both languages.
For instance, someone fluent in English and French who hears the word “for” might unconsciously access related words like “forage” and “forêt,” meaning forest in French.
This constant mental juggling strengthens critical brain networks responsible for memory and executive function. Over time, these reinforced pathways help offset the effects of dementia.
Finally, being bilingual seems to also benefit brain maintenance — its ability to remain healthy when faced with challenges.
Phillips’ team found that, compared to those who were monolingual, bilingual people showed less decline in their hippocampus region once cognitive problems progressed.
“I found this tremendously interesting because the hippocampus is not a language center, it is the primary memory center,” Bialystok told New Scientist.
“What this all says is that bilingualism changes the way you cope with an increasingly compromised brain,” she continued. “It doesn’t prevent dementia, it holds back the flood. When bilingual people eventually show cognitive problems, they decline faster, but it starts later.”
“Imagine what families could do with that extra time,” Bialystok added.
Phillips’ study was published in the fall in the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.
Research has shown that lifelong bilingualism offers more protection against dementia than picking up a second language as an adult because the language switching has been continuous from an early age.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t reap some cognitive benefits from the mental exercise of acquiring a new language right now.
“What you’re doing is giving your brain tremendous stimulation, and the bottom line is what’s hard for your brain is good for your brain,” Bialystok said.
And don’t worry — from a brain health standpoint, there’s no need to become a polyglot.
“There’s no empirical evidence that more languages offer more protection,” Bialystok noted.
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