Keep your brain sharp – is the most important tool that you need to stop mental decline.
Games, puzzles and crucifixes have been shown to reduce the risk of madness, a neurodegenerative state affecting nearly 7 million Americans.
Studies also suggest that speaking another language can do more than impress your date when you are ordering Mexican food – it can delay the onset of dementia.
“What is constantly emerging is that older adults who speak more than one language have clear advantages against dementia,” Natalie Phillips, a professor of psychology at Concordia University in Montreal, told New Scientist this week .
Scientists knew about the alleged bond between bilingualism and dementia for some time, as Canadian psychologist Ellen Balystok and her colleagues examined the records of 184 patients with dementia in 2007 and discovered that those who were bilinguals show peers.
It was unclear whether other factors were in the game, but a 2013 study by India seemed to confirm the findings.
Bilingual people develop symptoms of dementia 4.5 years later than one -linguistic people, regardless of their profession, sex, education and residence.
But why can the confused researchers happen – until late.
Phillips and her colleagues used advanced neuroimaging techniques to determine that bilingualism seems to help maintain breast dementia in three main ways.
First, it enhances the brain reserves, making it capable of keeping more damage before reaching its point of fracture.
Second, it benefits from the cognitive reserve, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and maintain cognitive function regardless of aging associated with change or damage.
“If you think about the brain reserve against the cognitive reserve, it’s like comparing a hardware advantage with a software advantage,” Phillips said.
When bilingual hearing a word in one language, their brains automatically activate associations for similar words in both languages.
For example, someone fluently in English and French who hears the word “for” can unconsciously enter words associated as “forage” and “forêt”, which means forest in French.
This constant mental fraud strengthens critical brain networks responsible for memory and executive function. Over time, these reinforced roads help compensate the effects of dementia.
Finally, being bilingual seems to also benefit brain maintenance – his ability to remain healthy when faced with challenges.
The Phillips team revealed that, compared to those who were one -year -old, bilingual people showed less decline in their Hypocampus region after cognitive problems advanced.
“I saw this extremely interesting because the hippocampus is not a language center, it is the main memory center,” Balystok New Scientist told.
“What says everything is that bilingualism changes the way you face an increasingly compromised brain,” she continued. “It does not prevent dementia, it holds the flood. When bilingual people eventually show cognitive problems, they fall faster, but it begins later.”
“Imagine what families could do with that extra time,” Balystok added.
The Phillips study was published in the fall in the bilingual journal: Language and Recognition.
Research has shown that lifelong bilingualism offers more protection against dementia than building a second language as an adult because language change has been continuous from an early age.
However, this does not mean that you cannot reap some cognitive benefits from the mental exercise of getting a new language now.
“What you are doing is give your brain tremendous stimulation, and ultimately is what is difficult for your brain is good for your brain,” Balystok said.
And don’t worry – from a brain health point of view, there is no need to become a polyglot.
“There is no empirical evidence that more languages offer more protection,” Balystok noted.
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