Thread: Study: Bilingualism helps delay dementia

New Study Shows Brain Benefits Of Bilingualism : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR

The largest study so far to ask whether speaking two languages might delay the onset of dementia symptoms in bilingual patients as compared to monolingual patients has reported a robust result. Bilingual patients suffer dementia onset an average of 4.5 years later than those who speak only a single language.

While knowledge of a protective effect of bilingualism , the present study significantly advances scientists' knowledge. emphasize the size of its cohort: 648 patients from a university hospital's memory clinic, including 391 who were bilingual. It's also touted as the first study to reveal that bilingual people who are illiterate derive the same benefit from speaking two languages as do people who read and write. It also claims to show that the benefit applies not only to Alzheimer's sufferers but also people with frontotemporal and vascular dementia.

Discussion? Comments?

Conclusion? After you retire, master at least one new language every five years

It looks like a regular "amazing discovery" made by "British scientists" (tm).

Any intellectual activity supports your brain in a good shape. Of course, if you don't have predisposition to mental disorders, which can appear as a result of increasing brain activity.
Learning of a language, like typical intellectual activity, can help as well.

Originally Posted by DrBaldhead

Conclusion? After you retire, master at least one new language every five years

Ha! If I could master Russian alone I would be well pleased with myself.

Originally Posted by Paul G.

It looks like a regular "amazing discovery" made by "British scientists" (tm).

Any intellectual activity supports your brain in a good shape. Of course, if you don't have predisposition to mental disorders, which can appear as a result of increasing brain activity.
Learning of a language, like typical intellectual activity, can help as well.

Да, любое интеллектуальное напряжение - это зарядка для мозга, развивает, углубляет способность воспринимать новые навыки.
Но изучение нового языка это не просто только интеллектуальная тренировка, это ещё и приобретение нового себя. Я давно заметила, что когда я говорю на английском, я не совсем обычная я, немного другая. Это, наверное, многие замечают и по себе. Может быть, такое воздействие на мозг таки может отодвинуть Алсаймерс.

И да, вот нагуглилось:
"The question “Are you another person when you speak another language?” has been answered in various ways by neurophysiologists, psycho- and sociolinguists and by cognitive scientists. They show how cognition and emotion go hand in hand, how the acquisition of a second language can give you a different sense of self, how bilinguals have different bodily rhythms, coordinate words and gestures differently, think different thoughts in one or the other of their languages."
Berkeley Language Center - "Are You Another Person When You Speak Another Language?"


"Foreign languages and thinking

Oprima dos for better cognition

May 8th 2012, 18:36 by R.L.G. | NEW YORK

MANY people report feeling like different people when they speak a foreign language. I've been sceptical of these claims, since many of them seem to line up too neatly with national stereotypes: "I feel warmer and more relaxed in Spanish," "German makes me reason more carefully" and the like. But a new study seems to show that people really do think differently in a foreign language—any foreign language. Namely, people are less likely to fall into common cognitive traps when tested in a language other than their mother tongue. ..." http://www.economist.com/blogs/johns...s-and-thinking

Too late...

What was the question?

The old good one:
Пациент: Доктор, помогите, у меня провалы в памяти! (= memory lapses)
Доктор: И давно это у вас?
Пациент: Что?
Доктор: Ну, провалы в памяти.
Пациент: Провалы? Какие провалы?

Most people never get much credit for their bilingualism.
Most of the time it's just taken for granted that you have to be bilingual under a lot of different circumstances.
The problem instead, occurs if you are NOT bilingual.
And I know plenty of bilingual people who might have a tiny edge over real backwater billies, but it's very marginal.

I guess the most painless way to make somebody bilingual is to start from childhood.
However odds are the kid will end up preferring the larger/more common language of the two, and miss out on the depth of the smaller one.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Most people never get much credit for their bilingualism.
Most of the time it's just taken for granted that you have to be bilingual under a lot of different circumstances.
The problem instead, occurs if you are NOT bilingual.
And I know plenty of bilingual people who might have a tiny edge over real backwater billies, but it's very marginal.

I guess the most painless way to make somebody bilingual is to start from childhood.
However odds are the kid will end up preferring the larger/more common language of the two, and miss out on the depth of the smaller one.

It would have been a lot easier to learn Russian if I had been raised speaking it at home. But being immersed in the culture really helps.