Abstract
As a result of advances in healthcare, the worldwide average life expectancy is steadily increasing. However, this positive trend has societal and individual costs, not least because greater life expectancy is linked to higher incidence of age-related diseases, such as dementia. Over the past few decades, research has isolated various protective “healthy lifestyle” factors argued to contribute positively to cognitive aging, e.g., healthy diet, physical exercise and occupational attainment. The present article critically reviews neuroscientific evidence for another such factor, i.e., speaking multiple languages. Moreover, with multiple societal stakeholders in mind, we contextualize and stress the importance of the research program that seeks to uncover and understand potential connections between bilingual language experience and cognitive aging trajectories, inclusive of the socio-economic impact it can have. If on the right track, this is an important line of research because bilingualism has the potential to cross-over socio-economic divides to a degree other healthy lifestyle factors currently do not and likely cannot.
Highlights
Cognitive aging refers to the physiological processes of decline in cognition and brain functioning as age increases
As we review in detail below, a plurality of relevant studies shows changes in the bilingual brain that overlap topographically with regions highly implicated in language processing/control, memory, and executive functioning (e.g., De Baene et al, 2015; Abutalebi and Green, 2016; Calabria et al, 2018). functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies show increased efficiency in neural recruitment during task performance in bilinguals, even when there are no measurable behavioral differences (e.g., Abutalebi et al, 2012; DeLuca et al, 2020)
In line with these results, in an investigation with fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET), Kowoll et al (2016) reported reduced glucose uptake in frontotemporal, parietal and cerebellar regions of bilinguals diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and probable Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), relative to a sample of monolinguals matched for age, gender ratio and disease severity
Summary
As a result of advances in healthcare, the worldwide average life expectancy is steadily increasing. This positive trend has societal and individual costs, not least because greater life expectancy is linked to higher incidence of age-related diseases, such as dementia. With multiple societal stakeholders in mind, we contextualize and stress the importance of the research program that seeks to uncover and understand potential connections between bilingual language experience and cognitive aging trajectories, inclusive of the socio-economic impact it can have. If on the right track, this is an important line of research because bilingualism has the potential to cross-over socioeconomic divides to a degree other healthy lifestyle factors currently do not and likely cannot
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