Bilingualismand the Brain

Why you should call your Mamusha every day!

New research shows individuals who speak two languages experiencememory loss later than individuals who speak only one.

Please don’t tell my mother it’s actually good formy brain to call her every day.

Since I grew up speaking both English and Polish,I’m what Baycrest psychologist Dr. Ellen Bialystokcalls a perfect example of a bilingual person.

And according to a study done by Dr. Bialystok, adistinguished research professor at York University,and her Baycrest colleagues, psychologist Dr. Fer-gus Craik and neurologist Dr. Morris Freedman,bilingualism may delay the onset of Alzheimer’s dis-ease and other dementias by up to four years.

BY KRYSTYNA LAGOWSKI

272008 Baycrest BREAKTHROUGHSTransforming The Way People Age

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So when I asked Dr. Bialystok ifthat means I should call mymother every day to flex my bilin-gual chops, she chuckled but ve-hemently agreed. She said itwasn’t enough to read a Polishbook, watch Polish television orlisten to a Polish CD. No, I actu-ally have to speak Polish, in a set-ting where it’s natural.

“The key is speaking,” says Dr. Bi-alystok. “When you are a personwho has the ability to speak twolanguages and you do so daily,every time you open your mouthto speak, both languages are avail-able. You need a mechanism tokeep focussed.

“Your brain already has a built-inmechanism to control attention –a set of cognitive processors in thefront of the brain called the ‘exec-utive function.’ Every time youspeak, it becomes a matter of ex-ecutive control. And the more youuse it, the better it gets,” she says.

In their recent study, Drs. Bia-lystok, Craik and Freedman ex-amined the diagnostic records of184 patients who visited Bay-crest’s Sam and Ida Ross MemoryClinic between 2002 and 2005 forcognitive complaints. The groupof patients included 93 who werebilingual, and 91 who were mono-lingual.

Although they had expected tofind some differences between thetwo groups, they were astonishedto find that bilingual patients ex-perienced memory loss or othersymptoms of dementia an averageof four years later than monolin-gual patients.

Four years is a dramatic length oftime for the disease to be delayed,according to the researchers, withimportant implications for thefamily and for the health-care sys-tem.

“Bilingual people develop betterattention skills because their exec-utive control is used for an ordi-nary activity like speaking. Whenwe give cognitive tasks to mono-linguals and bilinguals that requirefocussing attention where there isdistraction, bilinguals will do itbetter,” says Dr. Bialystok.

So when I go to a Polish restauranton Roncesvalles, and the waitresssays, “Hello, dzien dobry,” and Iask about the soup of the day inPolish, this is how bilingualism issupposed to work?

“You open your mouth and Polishcomes out,” says Dr. Bialystok.

“The context has primed one ofyour languages. That’s exactly thepoint. You could have asked herabout the soup in English but thecontext, the fact that you’re speak-ing to this person, has primedyour other language.

“Bilingual patients

experienced

memory loss or other

symptoms of

dementia an average

of four years later

than monolingual

patients.” �

Dr. Ellen Bialystok

292008 Baycrest BREAKTHROUGHSTransforming The Way People Age

“When I say you have to control at-tention and inhibit the other lan-guage, you’re not doing itconsciously. You need to be able toswitch and speak in both lan-guages,” she says.

But what exactly happens to delayAlzheimer’s and other dementias?Howdoes speaking Polish every dayto my mother keep my brainhealthy?

Dr. Bialystok says she believes it’spart of building up a “cognitive re-serve” in the brain. “All the stimu-lating things you do – from speakingtwo languages, going to a socialgroup, doing crossword puzzles –create a cognitive reserve. For rea-sons nobody has been able to ex-plain yet, if you stay cognitivelyactive andmaintain amentally stim-ulating lifestyle, you can continuefunctioning at a much higher level.”

Her colleague, Dr. Craik, a world-renowned authority on age-relatedchanges in memory processes, says,“We don’t know for sure how cog-nitive reserve works. I like to use theanalogy that it’s like squeezing bet-ter performance out of aweakerma-chine.”

Officially, Alzheimer’s disease cannotbe confirmed without an autopsy.“When you open up the brain of anAlzheimer’s patient, the brain is rid-dled with amyloid plaques and neu-rofibrillary tangles,” he says. “Theyare assumed to clog up the brain andessentially cause dementia.”

Dr. Craik theorizes that poor cogni-tive performance may be due to de-

creased connectivity in the brain.“As you get older, the connectionsamong neurons, which are typicallyin the thousands for a young adultor child, shrivel up. A young andhealthy adult neuron has branchesgoing out in all directions. But a neu-ron from a person in their 70s and80s ismuchmore shriveled, with rel-atively few connections,” he says.“You multiply that by several mil-lion and you get the picture that thebrain is less efficient.”

Dr. Bialystok explains that some-times an autopsy can reveal a brainthat is full of plaques and tangles, asure sign of Alzheimer’s, but whenyou ask the family if their loved onesuffered from dementia theymay besurprised. To Dr. Bialystok, thatwould mean the person was able touse their cognitive reserve to func-tion, even though their brainwas ac-tually deteriorating.

Dr. Bialystok offers the example oftwo seniors – one is a 75-year-oldbilingual, the other is a 71-year-oldmonolingual; both have been diag-nosedwith Alzheimer’s. “If you giveeach of them cognitive tests and the

results are the same for both, theprediction would be that the brainof the bilingual would be in muchworse shape than the younger sen-ior even though they are functioningat the same level.

“They’re able to squeeze higher per-formance out of a much more bro-ken machine,” she says. “That’s thecognitive reserve. However, the sizeof the reserve you can build is still tobe determined.”

The next step for Dr. Bialystok andher colleagues will be visiting theirpatients at home and doing detailedcognitive tests, whichwere not donein the original study. “We’re doinghome visits every six months totrack their progression, and have al-ready replicated the original effect.Bilinguals are showing onset symp-toms significantly later, four to fiveyears later.

“We want to get more data to seewhat happens with the cognitiveprogression over the long run,” shesays.

In the meantime, Dr. Bialystok saysit’s too soon to recommend brushingup on your high school French orsigning up for language classes, sincethe results of her study only dealtwith lifelong bilingualism.

Now, if you’ll kindly excuseme…I have to call my mother.

312008 Baycrest BREAKTHROUGHSTransforming The Way People Age

“[Bilinguals] are

able to squeeze better

performance

out of a

weaker machine.”

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