Bilingualism and Dementia? We have already heard about the many positives of language learning, including enhancing international business communication, and even the health benefits of learning a second language. Data from recent studies conducted on monolingual versus multilingual patients with dementia strongly indicate that speaking more than one language may actually help the brain slow the onset and progression of dementia.
Bilingualism and Dementia
Early studies indicated that bilingualism and dementia occurrences may be correlated. Based on the research, learning a second language, even a limited amount and as an adult, may help protect against cognitive decline as we age. There is evidence that speaking a second language physically alters your brain. People who are bilingual have denser gray matter in their language centers, and the parts of their brain that are devoted to memory, reasoning, and planning are larger than individuals who speak only one language.
By increasing brain activity in this manner, several studies have shown that we increase our chances of delaying dementia. In one well-known study which analyzed 450 Alzheimer’s patients, all of whom showed the same degree of impairment at the time of diagnosis, half of the patients were bilingual. According to the data these patients were diagnosed 4-5 years later than the patients who spoke only one language (Bialystok et al, 2011). More recently, a group of scientists conducted a study in Hyderabad, India which gave further evidence that people with dementia who spoke two or more languages experienced a delayed onset of symptoms.
Is Language the Only Relevant Factor Between Bilingualism and Dementia?
Many previous studies focused on the relationship between bilingualism and dementia primarily in immigrants. Most of the data came from studies on immigrants living in Canada (Bialystock et al., 2007). The data was based on comparing monolingual English-speaking native-born Canadian dementia patients with their bilingual counterparts. The bilingual patients were all immigrants to Canada who had learned English during adolescence or young adulthood, and came from a variety of backgrounds predominantly from Central and Eastern Europe.
But this data raises an obvious issue: is it bilingualism that delays the onset of dementia or is it life as an immigrant, and are there other influencing variables? The study of patients with dementia in India was the first to offer scientists a chance to examine the issue of language in a society where the majority of people are multilingual and shift naturally from language to language.
Multilingual versus Monolingual Speakers
A team of scientists led by Dr. Suvarna Alladi, a professor of neurology at the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad, India conducted a study on patients suffering from memory loss. They compared records of 648 patients with dementia who entered a memory clinic at one of the city’s university hospitals over a period of six years. Over half of the patients spoke more than one language. Researchers reported that patients who spoke a single language developed the first symptoms of dementia at an earlier age than those who were bilingual. The delay was slightly more than three years for Alzheimer’s disease, but about six years for frontotemporal dementia, and about 3.7 years for vascular dementia.
This study is the largest of its kind to document a delayed onset of symptoms in bilingual and multilingual patients with dementia. Hyderabad provided a unique environment since many residents normally speak at least two languages: The official languages of Andhra Pradesh, of which Hyderabad is the capital, are Telugu and Urdu; English and Hindi are also widely spoken due to their official status on the national level; and there are several other languages with significant numbers of speakers including Tamil, Marathi and Kannada. It is also the first study to report that illiterate patients who speak more than one language may have the same advantage as those who are educated (14% of patients were illiterate). Thus, both education and immigrant lifestyle were eliminated as directly influencing the delay of dementia observed in these patients.
It should be noted, however, that there is an important limitation in this study due to the fact that the population of dementia patients referred to the clinic from which the data was collected may not be representative of the general population. For example, the average age of disease onset was only 66 years, compared to the United States where 44% of Alzheimer’ s patients are 75 to 84 years of age, and 38% are 85 or older (according to 2013 statistics). Also, there was a relatively low prevalence of Alzheimer’s and a higher prevalence of rarer dementia types as compared with Western populations. Although there is still no definitive evidence that being bilingual is directly responsible for slowing dementia, there seems to be a strong association. So go ahead and learn a second language if you don’t speak one already – as professional translation services providers, we can attest to the benefits!
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