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!
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