Learning another language is one of the most enriching hobbies you can undertake. Not only because it allows you to communicate with people from other countries, but also because of its deep impact on brain health. In fact, new research shows that being multilingual could slow brain ageing by up to 13 years.
People who speak more than one language seem to have younger brains, and the more languages you speak, and the earlier you speak them, the better, according to findings from a study being presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies conference in Barcelona.
The study found that those who spoke two languages had brains that appeared to be around six years younger than those of people who spoke only one language. People who spoke three languages had brains that appeared about 7 years younger, and those who spoke four appeared about 13 years younger.
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Dr Lucia Amoruso, from the Basque Centre on Cognition, Brain and Language in San Sebastián, who presented the research, said: “In simple terms, people who spoke more languages tended to have brains that looked younger than expected for their chronological age.
