Being fluent in two languages is not only useful when traveling or at work. Being bilingual would also have an interest for mental health. Researchers at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine have found that adults who have been bilingual since childhood have better “cognitive flexibility.” The study, published in the the Journal of Neurosciencesuggests that the benefits of bilingualism on the functioning of the frontal lobe of the brain would be more visible as one ages.
The experiment was conducted on 110 adults aged between 60 and 68 years old. They were subjected to brain tests to assess their cognitive flexibility. Some of the volunteers spoke only one language, while the others had been bilingual since childhood.
As a result, the bilingual participants were able to perform the exercises faster than the others. The scans showed that the prefrontal cortex of the brain of bilinguals spent less energy than in unilingual people.
Being bilingual protects against senility
A previous study found that speaking two languages could also protect the brain certain age-related illnesses such as Alzheimer’s.
In 2007, researchers at the University of York found that in a group of 184 patients with cognitive impairment, symptoms of senility appeared later in bilingual people (75 years versus 71 years in monolinguals).
If knowing two languages could protect the brain, conversely the stress would make him age faster.
