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This essay studies the effects learning a second language has on the brain, and the scientific discussion on whether the benefits should be trusted as true, in addition to whether it can work as a brain stimulation tool.

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David  Eagleman  comments momentarily about the growth of a certain Albert Einstein's brain. Mr. Einstein had a quiet passion for paying the violin, and in brain scans taken of this mathematical geniuses brain uncovered that “the brain area devoted to his left fingers had expanded”, fingers that would have been used when he practiced and played the violin. So not only does learning a language grow the brain, but practicing almost anything really hard can have these positive effects!

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Read 1,725 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Locked in the silence and darkness of your skull, your brain fashions the rich narrative...

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a survey done of multilingual students about their language learning experience cross referenced with their memory. Two specific survey takers are referenced in the essay, as their experiences mirror what other articles have said, that one experienced different effects of learning languages, and that one was able to relate his third language to learning his second, making it easier to learn, when he connected neural structures in his brain.

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Introduces cognitive benefits not only as a side effect of learning a new language, but learning a new language as a tool to increase cognitive function. Interesting that someone decided to use this to an advantage. “A simple and short cognitive intervention can be designed to improve cognition supported by the reorganization of functional brain circuitry and the increase in neuronal structures.”

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Academic Journal/Brain Plasticity Third Age Learning

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Academic Journal/Brain Plasticity Third Age Learning

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Brings up that learning a new language as an older adult does not work as a cognitive correction tool, but rather is effective due to bilingualism individual experiences and how they relate and learn the language in their head. Seems so start off negative and then ends neutrally. “Bilingualism has come to be acknowledged not as a trait but as a highly individual experience where the context of use strongly modulates any cognitive effect that ensues from it.”

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This article was referenced by another on of my sources, and reports on research done on language learners brains while they were studying, and they themselves were surprised at hat they found. I think its cool that they found something they didn’t even intend to look for! “We were surprised that different parts of the brain developed to different degrees depending on how well the students performed and how much effort they had had to put in to keep up with the course.”

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At the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy, young recruits learn a new language at a very fast pace. By measuring their brains before and after the language training, a group of researchers has had an almost unique opportunity to observe what happens to the brain when we learn a new language in a short period of time.

At the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy in the city of Uppsala, young people with a flair for languages go from having no knowledge of a language such as Arabic, Russian or Dari to speaking it fluently in the space of 13 months. From morning to evening, weekdays and weekends, the recruits study at a pace unlike on any other language course.

As a control group, the researchers used medicine and cognitive science students at Umeå University -- students who also study hard, but not languages. Both groups were given MRI scans before and after a three-month period of intensive study. While the brain structure of the control group remained unchanged, specific parts of the brain of the language students grew. The parts that developed in size were the hippocampus, a deep-lying brain structure that is involved in learning new material and spatial navigation, and three areas in the cerebral cortex.

"We were surprised that different parts of the brain developed to different degrees depending on how well the students performed and how much effort they had had to put in to keep up with the course," says Johan Mårtensson, a researcher in psychology at Lund University, Sweden.

Students with greater growth in the hippocampus and areas of the cerebral cortex related to language learning (superior temporal gyrus) had better language skills than the other students. In students who had to put more effort into their learning, greater growth was seen in an area of the motor region of the cerebral cortex (middle frontal gyrus). The areas of the brain in which the changes take place are thus linked to how easy one finds it to learn a language and development varies according to performance.

Previous research from other groups has indicated that Alzheimer's disease has a later onset in bilingual or multilingual groups.

"Even if we cannot compare three months of intensive language study with a lifetime of being bilingual, there is a lot to suggest that learning languages is a good way to keep the brain in shape," says Johan Mårtensson.

Journal Reference:

Johan Mårtensson, Johan Eriksson, Nils Christian Bodammer, Magnus Lindgren, Mikael Johansson, Lars Nyberg, Martin Lövdén. Growth of language-related brain areas after foreign language learning. NeuroImage, 2012; 63 (1): 240 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.043

Cite This Page:

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nervous system; psychology research; medical education and training; brain tumor; language acquisition; child development; neuroscience; intelligence

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Language learning makes the brain grow, Swedish study suggests

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At the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy, young recruits learn a new language at a very fast pace. By measuring their brains before and after the language training, a group of researchers has had an almost unique opportunity to observe what happens to the brain when we learn a new language in a short period of time.

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The author created this as a form of advertisement/blog that makes you want to learn a language from him and his company. After researching, all of his claims were backed up by research, if not proven to be true. “Language learning can make you smarter, improve your decision-making, and even keep your brain healthy in old age!”

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How would you like a bigger brain?

Or a better memory?
Well, it might be easier than you think!
You already know that learning a foreign language can put you ahead in your career.

But there's a growing body of evidence that the health benefits of learning a foreign language may be significant as well.
Language learning can make you smarter, improve your decision-making, and even keep your brain healthy in old age!
Use a method that involves stories, for example, and you can activate parts of your brain you forgot existed!

So, is now the time to dust off your high-school Spanish textbook?

Let's have a closer look at what you stand to gain.

By the way, if you're thinking about learning a new language, but don't know where to start or which course to choose, take my course finder quiz to find the perfect language course for you!

1. Better Decision-Making Skills

Being able to speak another language can help you make better decisions. Studies from the University of Chicago have shown that people who speak another language are better able to pick up nuances and subtleties in any given situation.

A heightened appreciation of the complexities of a situation can lead to more rational decision-making in many areas of life. Monolingual people, on the other hand, tend to base their decisions more on emotions.

In other words, speaking another language can improve your life through better decision-making.

2. Improved Memory

Learning a foreign language helps improve memory. A recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology aimed to find out what effect learning a foreign language had on a child's memory.

This study found that bilingual children performed much better than monolingual children on tasks using their working memory. (Working memory deals with the storage and processing of information over a short period of time.) The conclusion of the study was that knowledge of more than one language had contributed to their better working memory.

If you think you would benefit from a better working memory in your education, or daily life, then learning a foreign language might be just what you need!

3. Increased Attention Span

But the benefits for your study skills don't stop there! Speaking a second language helps you focus, and deal with distractions appropriately, according to a study in the journal Brain and Language.

A bilingual person is accustomed to switching between different languages, deciding which is the appropriate language to use in a given situation (and which language should be avoided). This gives the brain plenty of practice in focusing and filtering information.

Basically, a bilingual person will be better at concentrating on what they're doing - such as studying, reading or writing - and block out any noise or distractions.

...all of which will help you keep the I nconsistency Villain at bay!

4. Improved Ability To Multitask

Related to your attention span is your ability to multi-task. A study by the NIH discovered that because bilinguals have better working memories, can focus their attention, and can disregard distractions, they are able to switch between tasks quickly and easily (just as they are able to switch between languages).

Speaking two languages, and switching between them, makes you better at multi-tasking in other tasks, too.

5. Increased Perceptual Sensitivity

The benefits of multiple languages can start as early as before a baby is able to speak. A psychologist from the University of British Columbia found that babies who are raised in bilingual households are able to distinguish different languages when they are spoken, even if they are not familiar with those languages.

For example, a baby raised in a house where Spanish and Catalan are spoken, would also be able to tell the difference between a totally different pair of languages, such as English and French. Essentially, exposure to two languages early on contributes to a person's perceptual sensitivity with unfamiliar things.

What this perceptual sensitivity could mean, is that babies raised with two languages will find it easier to learn other languages later in life, as a result of the ability to easily distinguish between different sounds.

So, if you'd like your child to grow up to be a polyglot, start them early on a second language!

6. Better Cognitive Abilities

Bilingual people have also been shown to have better cognitive abilities than monolinguals. Research from the University of Edinburgh suggests that specifically, bilingual people score better on tests of reading, verbal fluency and intelligence, all of which undoubtedly help bilinguals be better students.

Interestingly, this is regardless of what age the person learns the foreign language. So even a person who learns a foreign language as an adult will benefit from these improved skills.

Learning a foreign language can, in this way, help you learn other subjects too.

7. Improved First Language

By learning another language, your mother tongue can improve as a result. As you learn a second language, your knowledge of grammar improves. This linguistic awareness then transfers back to your first language.

With a greater appreciation for the mechanics of your first language, you can become a better writer, speaker, and communicator. With all the benefits that entails.

Want to become more articulate in your mother tongue? Learning another language might be a good first step!

8. Bigger Brain

In fact, as crazy as it may sound, learning a foreign language can actually increase the size of your brain. A group of Swedish scientists did an MRI study which showed that certain parts of the brain were bigger in people who had learnt a foreign language.

In this study, two groups of subjects underwent brain scans. One group did an intensive language course for three months. The other, the control group, did intensive courses in a subject that was not a language. What the scientists found was that specific parts of the language learners' brains became bigger than those of the non-language learners.

While at the moment it's not clear what this could mean, I'll take a bigger brain any day!

9. Delayed Onset Of Dementia

Given all the benefits outlined in this article, it's hardly surprising that learning a foreign language keeps your brain healthy for longer. Scientists, in the largest study yet to study the effects of bilingualism and dementia, have found that people who can speak more than one language tend to develop dementia up to five years later than monolingual people.

Speaking more than one language provides constant exercise for your brain. And keeping your brain active is one way in which to delay the onset of dementia.

In Conclusion

Whatever your age, the health benefits of learning a foreign language make it a surefire way to upgrade your life, and future-proof your brain for old age.

So why invest in yourself and get started this year?

To follow my experiments in fast, effective language learning, sign up to the mailing list!

Or if you're ready to get started with a new language right away, why not take my course finder quiz now and discover the perfect language course for you!
Please spread the word about the health benefits of language learning by sharing this post on social media! Have you noticed any of these benefits personally? Leave me a comment below to let me know!

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9 Surprising Health Benefits Of Learning A Foreign Language

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How would you like a bigger brain? Or a better memory? Well, it might be easier than you think! You already know that learning a foreign language can put you ahead in your career. But there's a growing body of evidence that the health benefits of learning a foreign language may be significant as well.

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Narrates the conversation on the topic, giving us input on many different points of views and comments from different researchers. It has mainly agreements, with some counter arguments. I also find it interesting that it claims teenagers who speak two languages are better at ignoring unneeded stimuli.  “In the new study, bilingual young adults performed better in ignoring irrelevant stimuli and focusing on relevant information. One possible reason for this ability is that the very processes of learning two languages and switching back and forth between them train the brain to be more attuned to auditory information, Bak said.”

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Learning a second language may help improve brain function regardless of when you start, according to a new study.

Researchers found that young adults proficient in two languages performed better on attention tests and had better concentration than those who spoke only one language, irrespective of whether they had learned that second language during infancy, childhood or their teen years.

The study appears in the current edition of the journal Frontiers in Psychology, led by Dr. Thomas Bak, a lecturer at Edinburgh's School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences.

Whether the positive effect extends to people who learn a language in middle age or beyond is not clear, but Bak and other brain researchers said they see no reason why not, and that is the focus of ongoing studies. "We have worked our way from adolescents to early adults," Bak told LiveScience. "We are currently working on middle age to retirement." [ 7 Ways the Mind and Body Change With Age]

Last year Bak and his colleagues, including Dr. Suvarna Alladi of Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad, India, found that people in India who spoke more than one language from a very young age developed dementia about four years later, on average, compared to those who spoke only one language. This finding, Bak said, inspired him to investigate the cognitive benefits of learning a second language during adulthood.

In the new study, bilingual young adults performed better in ignoring irrelevant stimuli and focusing on relevant information. One possible reason for this ability is that the very processes of learning two languages and switching back and forth between them train the brain to be more attuned to auditory information, Bak said.

This improvement in what is called auditory attention is essentially a measure of concentration, and could, for example, enable a person to better extract relevant information from a lecture, Bak said. He also noted that many drugs aimed at lessening the effects of Alzheimer's disease work by attempting to improve this attention mechanism.

"This is a nice study that adds to the body of literature trying to figure out exactly the conditions under which bilingualism improves cognitive function," said Dr. Ellen Bialystok, a professor and bilingualism expert at York University in Toronto, who was not involved in this research.

Bialystok added that "much is left to be done" in understanding the specific benefits of bilingualism across ages and populations.

Bak noted that study was small (it included 38 monolingual and 60 bilingual university students); the participants performed only a few mental tests; and the oldest learners of a second language were only 19 years old.

Dr. Ken Paap of San Francisco State University, an expert on cognitive psychology, cautioned about over-interpreting the new results. He said that the tests that Bak's team used are not typical measures of "executive function," which is the spectrum of cognition that includes memory, attention, problem solving, reasoning and more.

Paap also said that some studies on bilingual people found no such cognitive benefit, for example, studies of people who speak both Basque and Spanish, or Welsh and English. He described these people as "ideal bilinguals," in that "they are immersed in a bilingual region where both languages are acquired early; both languages are acquired to very high levels of proficiency; and most everyone speaks the same two languages and, thus, there is frequent switching between the languages."

Bialystok, however, remained more optimistic. "Nothing I can think of is more difficult or more cognitively engaging than trying to learn another language," she said. Learning a second language at any age "is an excellent activity to maintain cognitive function."

In a second study, published today (June 2) in the Annals of Neurology, Bak set out to determine if the positive effects of bilingualism on cognition could actually be the other way around: that people who have better cognitive functions are more likely to learn foreign languages.

For this, Bak tapped into a study of 853 participants, whose intelligence was first tested in 1947 and then retested between 2008 and 2010. Indeed, he found, the bilingual people in this group performed better than expected on intelligence tests at their advanced age, and showed less relative cognitive decline compared to monolingual people.
Follow Christopher Wanjek @wanjek for daily tweets on health and science with a humorous edge. Wanjek is the author of "Food at Work" and "Bad Medicine." His column, Bad Medicine, appears regularly on Live Science.

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Learning a New Language at Any Age Helps the Brain

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Learning a second language may help improve brain function regardless of when you start, according to a new study. Researchers found that young adults proficient in two languages performed better on attention tests and had better concentration than those who spoke only one language, irrespective of whether they had learned that second language during infancy, childhood or their teen years.

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This source touches on the multiple benefits that learning a language has and includes many studies and references. It also that the benefits range from early childhood to late adulthood, and includes possible downsides to bilingualism. “The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism extend from early childhood to old age as the brain more efficiently processes information and staves off cognitive decline.”

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Editor's note:

Today, more of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual than monolingual. In addition to facilitating cross-cultural communication, this trend also positively affects cognitive abilities. Researchers have shown that the bilingual brain can have better attention and task-switching capacities than the monolingual brain, thanks to its developed ability to inhibit one language while using another. In addition, bilingualism has positive effects at both ends of the age spectrum: Bilingual children as young as seven months can better adjust to environmental changes, while bilingual seniors can experience less cognitive decline.

We are surrounded by language during nearly every waking moment of our lives. We use language to communicate our thoughts and feelings, to connect with others and identify with our culture, and to understand the world around us. And for many people, this rich linguistic environment involves not just one language but two or more. In fact, the majority of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual. In a survey conducted by the European Commission in 2006, 56 percent of respondents reported being able to speak in a language other than their mother tongue. In many countries that percentage is even higher-for instance, 99 percent of Luxembourgers and 95 percent of Latvians speak more than one language. 1 Even in the United States, which is widely considered to be monolingual, one-fifth of those over the age of five reported speaking a language other than English at home in 2007, an increase of 140 percent since 1980. 2 Millions of Americans use a language other than English in their everyday lives outside of the home, when they are at work or in the classroom. Europe and the United States are not alone, either. The Associated Press reports that up to 66 percent of the world's children are raised bilingual. 3 Over the past few decades, technological advances have allowed researchers to peer deeper into the brain to investigate how bilingualism interacts with and changes the cognitive and neurological systems.

Cognitive Consequences of Bilingualism

Research has overwhelmingly shown that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When a person hears a word, he or she doesn't hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain's language system begins to guess what that word might be by activating lots of words that match the signal. If you hear "can," you will likely activate words like "candy" and "candle" as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition. For bilingual people, this activation is not limited to a single language; auditory input activates corresponding words regardless of the language to which they belong. 4

Some of the most compelling evidence for language co-activation comes from studying eye movements. We tend to look at things that we are thinking, talking, or hearing about. 5 A Russian-English bilingual person asked to "pick up a marker" from a set of objects would look more at a stamp than someone who doesn't know Russian, because the Russian word for "stamp," " marka," sounds like the English word he or she heard, "marker." 4 In cases like this, language co-activation occurs because what the listener hears could map onto words in either language. Furthermore, language co-activation is so automatic that people consider words in both languages even without overt similarity. For example, when Chinese-English bilingual people judge how alike two English words are in meaning, their brain responses are affected by whether or not the Chinese translations of those words are written similarly. 6 Even though the task does not require the bilingual people to engage their Chinese, they do so anyway.

Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in language difficulties. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly 7 and can increase tip-of-the-tongue states (where you're unable to fully conjure a word, but can remember specific details about it, like what letter it starts with). 8 As a result, the constant juggling of two languages creates a need to control how much a person accesses a language at any given time. From a communicative standpoint, this is an important skill-understanding a message in one language can be difficult if your other language always interferes. Likewise, if a bilingual person frequently switches between languages when speaking, it can confuse the listener, especially if that listener knows only one of the speaker's languages.

To maintain the relative balance between two languages, the bilingual brain relies on executive functions, a regulatory system of general cognitive abilities that includes processes such as attention and inhibition. Because both of a bilingual person's language systems are always active and competing, that person uses these control mechanisms every time she or he speaks or listens. This constant practice strengthens the control mechanisms and changes the associated brain regions. 9- 12

Bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require conflict management. In the classic Stroop task, people see a word and are asked to name the color of the word's font. When the color and the word match (i.e., the word "red" printed in red), people correctly name the color more quickly than when the color and the word don't match (i.e., the word "red" printed in blue). This occurs because the word itself ("red") and its font color (blue) conflict. The cognitive system must employ additional resources to ignore the irrelevant word and focus on the relevant color. The ability to ignore competing perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input is called inhibitory control. Bilingual people often perform better than monolingual people at tasks that tap into inhibitory control ability. Bilingual people are also better than monolingual people at switching between two tasks; for example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by color (red or green) to categorizing them by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more rapidly than monolingual people, 13 reflecting better cognitive control when changing strategies on the fly.

Changes in Neurological Processing and Structure

Studies suggest that bilingual advantages in executive function are not limited to the brain's language networks. 9 Researchers have used brain imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate which brain regions are active when bilingual people perform tasks in which they are forced to alternate between their two languages. For instance, when bilingual people have to switch between naming pictures in Spanish and naming them in English, they show increased activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a brain region associated with cognitive skills like attention and inhibition. 14 Along with the DLPFC, language switching has been found to involve such structures as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), bilateral supermarginal gyri, and left inferior frontal gyrus (left-IFG), regions that are also involved in cognitive control. 9 The left-IFG in particular, often considered the language production center of the brain, appears to be involved in both linguistic 15 and non-linguistic cognitive control. 16

The neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to subcortical brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds (e.g., the syllable "da") without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses to the auditory information. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, the bilingual listeners' neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound's fundamental frequency, 17 a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception. To put it another way, in bilingual people, blood flow (a marker for neuronal activity) is greater in the brain stem in response to the sound. Intriguingly, this boost in sound encoding appears to be related to advantages in auditory attention. The cognitive control required to manage multiple languages appears to have broad effects on neurological function, fine-tuning both cognitive control mechanisms and sensory processes.

Beyond differences in neuronal activation, bilingualism seems to affect the brain's structure as well. Higher proficiency in a second language, as well as earlier acquisition of that language, correlates with higher gray matter volume in the left inferior parietal cortex. 18 Researchers have associated damage to this area with uncontrolled language switching, 19 suggesting that it may play an important role in managing the balance between two languages. Likewise, researchers have found white matter volume changes in bilingual children 20 and older adults. 21 It appears that bilingual experience not only changes the way neurological structures process information, but also may alter the neurological structures themselves.

Improvements in Learning

Being bilingual can have tangible practical benefits. The improvements in cognitive and sensory processing driven by bilingual experience may help a bilingual person to better process information in the environment, leading to a clearer signal for learning. This kind of improved attention to detail may help explain why bilingual adults learn a third language better than monolingual adults learn a second language. 22 The bilingual language-learning advantage may be rooted in the ability to focus on information about the new language while reducing interference from the languages they already know. 23 This ability would allow bilingual people to more easily access newly learned words, leading to larger gains in vocabulary than those experienced by monolingual people who aren't as skilled at inhibiting competing information.

Furthermore, the benefits associated with bilingual experience seem to start quite early-researchers have shown bilingualism to positively influence attention and conflict management in infants as young as seven months. In one study, researchers taught babies growing up in monolingual or bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet appeared on one side of a screen. Halfway through the study, the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants had to adjust the rule they'd learned; only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule. 24 This suggests that even for very young children, navigating a multilingual environment imparts advantages that transfer beyond language.

Protecting Against Age-Related Decline

The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism also extend into older adulthood. Bilingualism appears to provide a means of fending off a natural decline of cognitive function and maintaining what is called "cognitive reserve." 9, 25 Cognitive reserve refers to the efficient utilization of brain networks to enhance brain function during aging. Bilingual experience may contribute to this reserve by keeping the cognitive mechanisms sharp and helping to recruit alternate brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging. Older bilingual people enjoy improved memory 26 and executive control 9 relative to older monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits.

In addition to staving off the decline that often comes with aging, bilingualism can also protect against illnesses that hasten this decline, like Alzheimer's disease. In a study of more than 200 bilingual and monolingual patients with Alzheimer's disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease at about 77.7 years of age-5.1 years later than the monolingual average of 72.6. Likewise, bilingual patients were diagnosed 4.3 years later than the monolingual patients (80.8 years of age and 76.5 years of age, respectively). 25 In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual patients matched on the severity of Alzheimer's symptoms. Surprisingly, the brains of bilingual people showed a significantly higher degree of physical atrophy in regions commonly associated with Alzheimer's disease. 27 In other words, the bilingual people had more physical signs of disease than their monolingual counterparts, yet performed on par behaviorally, even though their degree of brain atrophy suggested that their symptoms should be much worse. If the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help to improve its mileage, allowing it to go farther on the same amount of fuel.

Conclusion

The cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism extend from early childhood to old age as the brain more efficiently processes information and staves off cognitive decline. What's more, the attention and aging benefits discussed above aren't exclusive to people who were raised bilingual; they are also seen in people who learn a second language later in life. 25, 28 The enriched cognitive control that comes along with bilingual experience represents just one of the advantages that bilingual people enjoy. Despite certain linguistic limitations that have been observed in bilinguals (e.g., increased naming difficulty 7), bilingualism has been associated with improved metalinguistic awareness (the ability to recognize language as a system that can be manipulated and explored), as well as with better memory, visual-spatial skills, and even creativity. 29 Furthermore, beyond these cognitive and neurological advantages, there are also valuable social benefits that come from being bilingual, among them the ability to explore a culture through its native tongue or talk to someone with whom you might otherwise never be able to communicate. The cognitive, neural, and social advantages observed in bilingual people highlight the need to consider how bilingualism shapes the activity and the architecture of the brain, and ultimately how language is represented in the human mind, especially since the majority of speakers in the world experience life through more than one language.

References

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11. Abutalebi J, Pasquale ADR, Green DW, Hernandez M, Scifo P, Keim R, Cappa SF, Costa A. Bilingualism tunes the anterior cingulate cortex for conflict monitoring. Cerebral Cortex. 2011 doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr287. [[ PubMed] [ CrossRef] Google Scholar]

12. Green DW. Bilingual worlds. In: Cook V, Bassetti B, editors. Language and bilingual cognition. New York: Psychology Press; 2011. pp. 229-240. [ Google Scholar]

13. Prior A, MacWhinney B. A bilingual advantage in task switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 2010;13(2):253-262. [ Google Scholar]

15. Abutalebi J, Green DW. Control mechanisms in bilingual language production: Neural evidence from language switching studies. Language and Cognitive Processes. 2008;23(4):557-582. [ Google Scholar]

29. Diaz R, Klingler C. Towards an explanatory model of the interaction between bilingualism and cognitive development. In: Bialystok E, editor. Language processing in bilingual children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1991. pp. 167-192. [ Google Scholar]

Articles from Cerebrum: the Dana Forum on Brain Science are provided here courtesy of Dana Foundation

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The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual

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Today, more of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual than monolingual. In addition to facilitating cross-cultural communication, this trend also positively affects cognitive abilities. Researchers have shown that the bilingual brain ...

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Only disagreement found, claiming there was no benefits, and if they were they are limited to certain types of bilinguals. They seem very adamant on this, that it is just not possible, which I find interesting due to the amounting evidence against that notion. “Across 12 different measures of executive function, derived from 4 different nonverbal tasks, there was no consistent evidence supporting the hypotheses that either early bilingualism, highly fluent balanced bilingualism, or trilingualism enhances inhibitory control, monitoring or switching.”

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Paap and Greenberg concluded that there is no coherent evidence for bilingual advantages in executive processing. More optimistic researchers believe that the advantages may be restricted to certain types of bilinguals. Recent large-scale and lifespan investigations that tested highly fluent bilinguals from communities where the same two languages are spoken by most residents reported no bilingual advantages in any age group or in any of the tasks used to measure executive functioning. The present study takes a complementary approach by examining a sample that is quite homogeneous in terms of current life experiences, but heterogeneous in terms of its exposure to second languages. The composite database of 168 bilinguals and 216 monolinguals is used to explore for differences based on: (1) the age of acquiring a second language (L2), (2) the relative proficiency of an L2 and (3) the number of languages used. Across 12 different measures of executive function, derived from 4 different nonverbal tasks, there was no consistent evidence supporting the hypotheses that either early bilingualism, highly fluent balanced bilingualism, or trilingualism enhances inhibitory control, monitoring or switching. In fact, when statistically significant effects did occur, they more often disconfirmed than confirmed these hypotheses.

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Are bilingual advantages dependent upon specific tasks or specific bilingual experiences?

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Paap and Greenberg concluded that there is no coherent evidence for bilingual advantages in executive processing. More optimistic researchers believe that the advantages may be restricted to certain types of bilinguals.