Learning More Than One Language Slows Down "Brain Aging"

Results from a study presented at the European Association of Neuroscience Societies Forum revealed that people who speak more than one language appear to have younger brain ages than expected compared to their chronological ages. According to these new findings, acquiring multiple languages may help mitigate some age-related changes, with this effect being more pronounced among those who began learning another language at an early age and achieved a higher level of proficiency, as reported by Al Arabiya.net yesterday citing the specialized website Science Daily. The study was presented by Dr. Lucia Amoruso from the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language in San Sebastian, Spain, in collaboration with researchers from the Latin American Institute for Brain Health at Adolfo Ibanez University in Chile, the Cognitive Neuroscience Center at the University of San Andres in Argentina, and the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. To measure brain aging, the researchers initially studied 728 individuals and developed a “brain aging clock” using magnetoencephalography, a technique that detects the faint magnetic fields generated by brain cell activity.