Why bilingual brains are smarter and faster ?

Bilingual people tend to produce fewer words of any given semantic category than people who only speak one language fluently. In other words, their individual vocabularies in each language tend to be smaller than that of people who only speak one of those languages.

Another study has shown that bilingual people also experience 'nearly twice as many' tip-of-the-tongue moments (when you can't find the exact word you want to describe something) than their monolingual peers. 

According to research from the universities of York (Canada) and Granada (Spain), bilingual children between five and seven years old who participated in the study performed better than the monolingual ones on those tasks that involved using the working memory. In addition, this ability benefited the development of other executive functions, especially when these functions were interacting with each other.

Other studies have also analysed the development of these functions, but taking into account the family income level of the children participating.

In a study in which the professor and her team reviewed neuroimaging and behavioural studies that analysed bilingualism in adulthood, the scientists concluded that mastering two languages ​​protects against cognitive deterioration by improving the cognitive reserve.

This concept refers to the protective effect of mental and physical activity carried out throughout life in the face of healthy aging. According to some studies, bilingualism can delay the onset of symptoms in people suffering from dementia by just over four years.

“These are activities we can engage in to keep our brains and minds healthy(music, social groups, exercise, etc.). Bilingualism is one such experience,” says Bialystok.

However, the researcher emphasizes that mastering several languages ​​does not prevent dementia but, apparently, bilingual people live with the disease longer before the symptoms become evident and interfere with their independence.

Improve the recovery from a stroke

Bilingualism also seems to be beneficial when a person suffers a stroke. People who speak several languages ​​are twice as likely to recover their normal cognitive functions after an attack of this type compared to those who speak only one.

 This was revealed by an international study in which the researchers analysed the cases of 608 patients from the Institute of Medical Sciences of Nizam (India) who had suffered a stroke. After the attack, 40.5% of bilinguals recovered normal cognition, compared to 19.6% of monolinguals.

In view of these results, the authors suggest that having mastered two languages ​​improves brain recovery after a stroke and that this advantage could be related to better cognitive reserve.