Why being bilingual is good for your brain

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 day. In the bilingual brain,

all our languages are active, all at the same time. The continual effort

of suppressing a language when speaking another, along with

the 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 Bialystok and her team

made a discovery that shook the

scientific community - and has massive real-world

implications. It was the first

study which suggested that bilingual people - people who speak

more than one language - develop dementia four

to four-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 ageing 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 a certain skill is,

the more likely it is to have a positive

effect on cognitive reserve. 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 neural networks. When you're learning a new

language as a child, you're building new 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 Ormond Street suggests this is just part of the story. So we invited three groups

of children that were aged eight to 10. We had a group of children who

were monolinguals. A group of children who had

early exposure to Greek and English from birth -

they were our early bilinguals. And finally, we had a group who had

been exposed to English between the age of two and five,

and they were our later bilinguals. So what we did that no-one

had done before, is that we asked the children to

lie in the scanner while doing nothing -

and just stare at a cross. And during this,

we measured their brain activity. What we found that was really

exciting for us is that our early bilingual group had the strongest connectivity

in the network at rest. And these group of regions

are regions that light up when we're doing nothing

and just mind-wandering. A little bit like if you're going

to the gym every day, your muscles might look

bigger at rest. Similarly your brain might be

better connected at rest, because you are learning

a language early. And this is something no-one

had found before. And there's more. One lesser-known behavioural effect of bilingualism in both children

and adults is the ability to see the other

people's perspective, or to understand that it is possible

to have different points of view. Recent studies have

also found that people tend to react more emotionally in their first

language, and more rationally, in a more abstract way,

in their second. And the way it is usually explained

is that the first language is the one which we use to speak

with family, with friends - in informal settings. The second language is usually

learned at school, at the university, at work. Scientists are discovering

new upsides to being bilingual all the time. And it's not just our brains

that benefit. Learning new languages, and speaking more than

one language, is very important - not only for

individuals, but also for societies. Learning new languages

can open doors to new cultural experiences,

life opportunities. Different people,

different communities, and different

ways of seeing the world. And with that,

we'll say a final... Bye!