Bilingual Works Well for the Brain

Brain Finds Different Ways to Tackle A Situation

Alzheimer’s disease is bad for the patient and the people around him/her. Trying to deter the disease by any means is a big sigh of relief for all individuals. While exercising has been upheld to protect against Alzheimer’s, the latest is that bilingualism or having the ability to speak two languages can delay Alzheimer’s by as much as 4.5 years. This is just not hypothesis but the result of deep-rooted research that studied MRI data to understand brain areas responsible for cognition and language. Read more on Alzheimer's disease at www.firsteatright.com. 

Mild, cognitive impairment (MCI) is the precursor to Alzheimer’s and the research included a combination of individuals who had MCI or Alzheimer’s and who were monolingual or multilingual. If you look at the structure of the human brain, the medial temporal lobes are primary for memory formation. The study found that multilingual patients (MCI and Alzheimer’s) had thicker cortex than the monolinguals. Such patients make up for the AD-related tissue loss by searching for alternative networks or brain regions for processing.
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This study also gives scope for further research into cognition as it puts forth the fact that, people speaking more than one language have better chances of cognitive reserve. By cognitive research, we refer to the brain’s ability to tackle a tricky situation by finding other ways to finish the task.