Knowing a Foreign Language Prevents Alzheimer’s

The scientists from the University of Toronto (Canada) argue that the knowledge of at least one foreign language may delay the appearance of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

In the course of the study, the researchers conducted tomographic scanning among the patients with the first symptoms of the disease. All the participants of the experiment had similar levels of education and the same level of basic skills. A half of them spoke a foreign language fluently, and the other half did not speak any foreign language at all.
The experiment has shown that the patients, who speak foreign languages, demonstrate the appearance of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease later in their life. This phenomenon is explained by the fact that polyglots maintain the ongoing brain activity, switching from one language to another. The brain of such people has more opportunities to compensate for the loss with the beginning of neurodegenerative processes.