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Published on: April 28, 2016
Bilingualism and "brain reserve": a matter of age
Stefan Heim1, Johanna Stumme1, Nora Bittner2
1Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany.
Abstract:
There is a lively debate whether bilingualism as a state of permanent cognitive control contributes to so-called brain reserve, thus delaying the onset of symptoms associated with neurodegeneration by up to 5 years. Here, we address this question in a large-scale (n = 399) population-based study. We compared the gray matter volume of monolinguals versus bilinguals in the left inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule cortex and its modulation by biological age. Three core findings emerged: (1) Brain volume was systematically higher in bilinguals than monolinguals. (2) This difference disappeared at higher ages, and the slope of decline was steeper for bilinguals than monolinguals. (3) The volume difference between age groups disappeared in the inferior frontal gyrus at earlier ages than in the inferior parietal lobule. Thus, bilingualism might indeed contribute to brain reserve in older age, with posterior regions showing a particular resilience to atrophy and thus less necessity for functions to shift to anterior control regions.
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