What if learning a second language could provide you three more years of healthy aging or, alternatively, speaking only your mother’s tongue was linked to a loss of five years of healthspan? These are the implications of an important new study published on Monday. First, let’s review a bit of background.
Over the past two decades there have been many reports that multilingual individuals have improved cognition compared with their monolingual counterparts with better attention, task switching, working memory and potential protection from Alzheimer’s disease. It’s not just advantages for functionality. Brain structure studies in multilingual vs monolingual participants have shown increased gray matter density in key regions (caudate nucleus, left inferior parietal cortex) that are linked to executive function, such as this frequently cited 2004 paper [Figure in linked article]. This feature is known as neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to change and reorganize its neural connections throughout life. Note how the gray matter density increase is maximum when proficiency in a second language occurs as a younger age.