Hello ETCiers! Tomorrow is going to start another cycle of Brutal Force and it’s fair a post totally in English to make you more excited in practicing this language.
How your brain changes when you speak several languages
There are decades that scientists argue about the question of the benefits of speaking another language inside our brain, although they agree with one thing: to speak languages change a little bit the physical form of it and its performance, as well.
It is not necessary being a baby to the learning of new languages achieves your brain, leaving marks in it. Therefore, the bilingual people’s brains are slightly different physically from monolingual people’s. Certain aereas related to the speech become stronger or present changes in the ways to conect with other parts of the brain. These changes are consequences of tools our brain uses, which we call cognitive processes, the main of them: perception, memory, atention and emotion. When we speak a foreign language this processes are exercised on an intense way, that’s able to change physically our brain.
We are not talking that a bilingual brain is better than a monolingual, instead, the functions of them are the same, but it’s like to compare an athlete of any area with a runner for example, the legs of the second are more exercised and prepared for that activity. And this way is our brain.
Let’s talk about the consequences of the differences between a monolingual and bilingual brain?
- According to the neuroscientist Jon Duñabeitia, in an interview to the BBC, the multilingual since they were children had a bigger capacitivity of operating memory – or working memory – that’s the short-term memory. Not recollections or something in the long-term, but data operated immediately, like numbers or especific informations.
- Some studies reveal it’s easier for bilingual people to put themselves in someone’s position and see the other person’s life from a different angle and this allows solving a puzzle, for example. There is a better cognitive flexibility.
- The bilingual brain has a bigger cognitive reservation, means it tends to age in better conditions, according to evidences, to the brain, the bilingualism extended and regular has a certain effect to improve the cognitive reservation when we get older. It offers protection against the deterioration caused by ageing. In other words diseases like Alzheimer, Parkinson and other neurodegenerative diseases come later or will have effects softer in multilingual people, according to recent studies.
Then, we conclude the bilingual brain may be considered a brain healther that might delay and relieve cognitive cons. In addition, the effort we make to learn a language being adults it’s already an exercise completely beneficial to our brain.
If you’ve got here reading this text in English and it’s not your native language, congratulations, you have a healthy brain!! How about train it more and more? Come with us to the new cycle of Brutal Force to improve the language that will take you further or even try other languages as French, Spanish, German, Italian and Japanese with us! To exercise our brain never is too much.