Is being bilingual good for you brain? | BBC Ideas

it used to be thought that being bilingual was a bad thing that it would confuse or hold people back especially children turns out we couldn't have been more wrong learning new languages is an exercise of the mind it's the mental equivalent of going to a gym every [Music] day in the bilingual brain all our languages are active all at the same time the continue effort of suppressing a language when speaking another along with a mental challenge that comes with regularly switching between languages exercises our brain it improves our concentration problem solving memory and in turn our creativity it's now widely accepted that there are huge benefits to being bilingual a key breakthrough came back in 2007 in Toronto when Ellen B alisto and her team made a discovery that shook the scientific community and has massive it was the first study which suggested that bilingual people people who speak more than one language develop dementia four to 4 and a half years later than those who don't it was a powerful confirmation of the idea of cognitive Reserve now what is cognitive Reserve cognitive Reserve is the idea that people develop a reserve of thinking abilities and this protects them against losses that can occur through aging and disease as well as delaying the onset of dementia bilingual people have been shown to recover significantly better after a stroke learning anything new helps build cognitive Reserve but there's something special about language language is particularly Broad and complex it affects ideas and Concepts perception different sounds the more complex certain skill is the more likely it is to have a positive effect on so when is the best time to learn a new language well here's part of the answer the brain is a complex set of new networks when you're learning a new language as a child you're building new [Music] networks but when you learn a language later in life you have to modify the existing networks and make more connections because learning languages later in life can be more challenging the benefits can also be greater but a 2023 study at Great Orman Street suggests this is just part of the story