Learning another language appears to slow brain ageing, scientists say
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- Researchers found speaking two languages was linked to brains appearing roughly 6 years younger than monolinguals, three languages to ~7 years younger, and four languages to ~13 years younger, using magnetoencephalography brain scans processed with AI.
- Dr. Lucia Amoruso of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language said the effect operates as a gradient — tied to proficiency depth and how early a second language was acquired — not simply bilingualism versus monolingualism.
- Scientists from Spain, Chile, Argentina and Dublin studied 728 people in the Basque region, where speakers of Spanish, Basque, French and/or English offered a natural multilingual comparison group, then validated the findings in a second independent group of 144.
- Prof Christina Dalla of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens endorsed the findings, arguing language learning should be supported at school and throughout life for social, cultural, and brain-health reasons.
- Prof Eef Hogervorst of Loughborough University cautioned that the apparent brain-age benefit could be confounded by other protective activities more common among multilingual people, such as reading, lifelong learning, and playing musical instruments — factors the study could not fully control for.
Why it matters: For the hundreds of millions of people who already speak multiple languages, and for education policymakers weighing language curriculum investment, the study adds a brain-health dimension to existing social and cultural arguments. But with researchers themselves unable to rule out confounding lifestyle factors, the finding remains correlational — not yet a prescription.
