Four languages linked to brains 13 years younger: study
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- Researchers at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies conference in Barcelona reported that bilingual brains appeared ~6 years younger, trilingual ~7 years younger, and quadrilingual ~13 years younger than monolingual counterparts, based on magnetoencephalography scans of 728 people.
- The team from Spain, Chile, Argentina and Dublin focused on the highly multilingual Basque region, comparing speakers of Spanish, Basque, French and/or English, and validated their findings in a separate group of 144 people with equal numbers of one-, two-, three-, and four-language speakers.
- Dr. Lucia Amoruso of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language said the protective effect was gradient-based — higher proficiency and earlier age of second-language acquisition also correlated with more delayed brain aging, not just the binary of bilingual versus monolingual.
- Prof Christina Dalla of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens endorsed the findings and urged support for language learning 'at school and throughout life, even if it's hard,' noting earlier acquisition appears more beneficial.
- Prof Eef Hogervorst of Loughborough University cautioned that multilingual people may also pursue healthier lifestyles, lifelong learning, reading and playing musical instruments, meaning the language effect cannot be cleanly isolated from other protective factors.
Why it matters: This is the largest magnetoencephalography-based study to quantify a dose-response between multilingualism and brain age — each additional language correlated with up to 13 years of apparent youth. For educators and policymakers, it adds neurological weight to arguments for early and sustained language instruction, though the correlational design means the study cannot prove that languages themselves cause the effect.
