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| Alzheimer’s patient and a volunteer |
Psychologists at York University in Toronto examined 450 patients who were diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease. Half of them were bilinguals and other half was monolinguals.
After four years into observation, the team of psychologists learned that bilingual patients’ brain activity level was on average more so than monolingual patients. Also, the researchers found out that on average most of the bilingual patients were four to five years older than monolingual patients with same level of imparity. So bilinguals were able to cope with the disease four to five years longer.javascript:fncSaveInfo()
Psychologist Ellen Bialystok, one of the researchers from York University, presented this observation at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Feb. 18.
“Once the disease begins to compromise this region of the brain, bilinguals can continue to function,” she said. “Bilingualism is protecting older adults, even after Alzheimer’s disease is beginning to affect cognitive function.”
The researchers think that this might be because bilinguals consistently exercising the “executive control system” more in order to prevent two languages from getting mixed up. This makes the system to order more advanced level of brain activities, so the bilingual patients cope better with the disease and the symptoms doesn’t worsen as fast as monolinguals.
Also, Bialystok revealed that these benefits are not limited to those who raised speaking two languages, but also to people who picked up a second language later in life.
(아주경제 권지혜 기자)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com