Bilingualism delays onset of dementia
`Lifelong bilingualism can help delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia in the elderly by an average of four years, according to a small study by Canadian researchers.
Patients who spoke more than one language reported memory loss or other dementia symptoms on average four years later than people who spoke only one language. [..]
Principal investigator Ellen Bialystok, a psychologist and associate scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, said the results were unusually clear.
“Rarely does a study give such clean results, so this was surprising to us,” she told CBC News Online.’
