Parlez vous francais? Sprechen Sie Deutsche? If so and you also speak English, Arabic (or any other language), your brain may have developed some distinct advantages over your monolingual peers.
New research into the neurobiology of bilingualism has found that being fluent in two languages, particularly from early childhood, not only enhances a person’s ability to concentrate, but might also protect against the onset of dementia and other age-related cognitive decline.
A team of researchers has established that years of bilingualism change how the brain carries out tasks that require concentrating on one piece of information without becoming distracted by other information.
This makes the brain more efficient and economical with its resources.
Dr Ana Ins Ansaldo from the University of Montreal and a team of researchers found that bilinguals showed higher connectivity between visual processing areas located at the back of the brain.
Bilinguals, they say, become experts at selecting relevant information and ignoring information that can distract from a task.
It was not long ago, that parents and educators feared that exposing children to a second language at too early an age would not only delay their language skills, but harm their intellectual growth.
Now research suggests that being bilingual may give children an advantage at school. Bilingual preschoolers have been found to be better able than their monolingual peers at focusing on a task while tuning out distractions.
A similar enhanced ability to concentrate, a sign of a well-functioning working memory, has been found in bilingual adults, particularly those who became fluent in two languages at an early age.
It may be that managing two languages helps the brain sharpen and retain its ability to focus while ignoring irrelevant information.
To arrive at this conclusion, Ansaldo’s team asked two groups of seniors (one of monolinguals and one of bilinguals) to perform a task that involved focusing on visual information while ignoring spatial information.
The researchers compared the networks between different brain areas as people did the task.
They found that monolinguals recruited a larger circuit with multiple connections, whereas bilinguals recruited a smaller circuit that was more appropriate for the required information.
The results may explain why the brains of bilinguals are better equipped at staving off signs of cognitive ageing or dementia.
“As a relatively young population, there is low awareness of Alzheimer’s disease in the Middle East and so helping families understand the disease in a family member is the priority when dealing with patients,” says Dr Stefan Diez, consultant neurologist at the Neuroscience Centre of Excellence at the American Hospital Dubai.
There are few statistics about the disease in the Middle East, but we do see early incidence (up to 10 years earlier than in the West) of other age-related diseases such as stroke and heart disease in Egypt, where stats are available.
“Unfortunately, this suggests that the Middle East may face the burden of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias much earlier than in the West. The good news is that our ability to predict the disease in patients and ultimately the potential to treat the disease is improving rapidly,” says Dr Diez.