The case for learning a language just gained an unexpected argument: it may help keep the brain young. Research presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum in Barcelona suggests that the more languages a person speaks, the younger their brain appears – with the gap widening to as much as 13 years for those fluent in four.
As we age, the billions of nerve cells in the brain gradually lose some of their connectivity, and memory and speed of thought tend to slip along with it. To measure how multilingualism intersects with that decline, a team led by Dr Lucia Amoruso of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language studied 728 people in Spain's Basque region – an area where speaking Spanish, Basque, French and English in various combinations is common.
Using magnetoencephalography, a technique that tracks the magnetic signals of brain activity, the researchers built what they call a "brain-ageing clock" and then compared each person's biological brain age against it. The pattern was consistent. People who spoke two languages had brains that looked around six years younger than those of people who spoke only one; three languages bought roughly seven years, and four languages about thirteen. Picking up a second language early in life, and reaching a high level of fluency, appeared to deepen the effect.
Why it matters
The finding builds on earlier work by the same group – with collaborators in Chile, Argentina and Ireland – which found that populations in more multilingual countries seemed to age more slowly. What is new here is the focus on individual brains rather than whole populations, and the suggestion that multilingualism works as a gradient rather than a simple on-off switch: the depth and duration of language experience seem to matter, not just whether someone counts as bilingual.
Some caution is warranted. The results were presented at a conference and have not yet completed the full journey through peer review, so they are best read as a strong signal rather than a settled conclusion. Even so, they add to a growing body of evidence that keeping the brain busy – and few things tax it quite like juggling several languages – may be among the more enjoyable ways to protect it as the years pass.