What does bilingualism do to the brain? Are there benefits to being bilingual? Turns out there are some surprising upsides.
It used to be thought that being bilingual was a bad thing - that it would confuse or hold people back, especially children. Turns out, we couldn't have been more wrong.
Now, what is cognitive reserve? Cognitive reserve is the idea that people develop a reserve of thinking abilities, and this protects them against losses that can occur through ageing and disease. As well as delaying the onset of dementia, bilingual people have been shown to recover significantly better after a stroke. Learning anything new helps build cognitive reserve. But there's something special about language.
The brain is a complex set of neural networks. When you're learning a new language as a child, you're building new networks. But when you learn a language later in life, you have to modify the existing networks and make more connections. Because learning languages later in life can be more challenging, the benefits can also be greater.
One lesser-known behavioural effect of bilingualism in both children and adults is the ability to see the other people's perspective, or to understand that it is possible to have different points of view. Learning new languages, and speaking more than one language, is very important - not only for individuals, but also for societies.
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