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Share on Pinterest<\/a>Learning another language can help keep the brain young, and there\u2019s scientific evidence to prove it. MNT design\/ Photo by DarioGaona\/Oscar Wong\/Getty Images<\/p>\nLearning more than one language doesn\u2019t just feel good, it also brings a wealth of benefits. There are the obvious ones, like being able to communicate effectively as you travel, and enriching your inner life by accessing books, films, and other materials in the languages in which they were originally written.<\/p>\n
Speaking more than one language fluently, however, also reshapes the brain in surprising ways. Studies are increasingly finding that bilingual people, who have native command of two languages, or multilinguals, who are able to speak more than two languages, are able to maintain their brains younger and healthier for longer, and that\u2019s no coincidence.<\/p>\n
In the process of learning new languages, and recalling words and grammatical structures from different language sets, our brain are constantly being \u201cexercised\u201d and forming fresh connections.<\/p>\n
This leads not just to a kind of constant \u201crejuvenation\u201d of brain cell networks, but also to improved resilience even when the brain is \u201cchallenged\u201d by exposure to viruses and disease. Here is what the latest research has found.<\/p>\n
Firstly, how does the human brain recall different languages? That is what two scientists from New York University set out to find in 2025, conducting a study whose findings they later published in JNeurosci<\/a>.<\/p>\n Xuanyi Jessica Chen<\/a>, a doctoral researcher in psychology, and Esti Blanco-Elorrieta<\/a>, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology and neural science worked with 23 Spanish\u2013English bilingual speakers (17 females, five males, one nonbinary participant), aged 18\u201345 years, to investigate where languages spoken with equal proficiency \u201creside\u201d in the brain, and how bilinguals retrieve them.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the remarkable things about bilinguals is that they can switch between languages that often use very different words and sounds,\u201d said Blanco-Elorrieta, speaking to Medical News Today. <\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to understand whether the brain uses separate mechanisms for each language or whether it can reuse the same underlying machinery across languages,\u201d they explained.<\/p>\n Chen and Blanco-Elorrieta used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to track the brain activity of study participants in minute detail while they engaged in translation exercises between the two languages.<\/p>\n Then, they looked at what happened in participants\u2019 brains when they worked with cognates, similar words with similar meanings across the two languages, and \u201cpseudowords,\u201d made-up words that followed syntactic and syllable structures common in both Spanish and English.<\/p>\n What the researchers found was that the brain appears to have \u201ca language-general computational mechanism,\u201d meaning that there is a single \u201cengine,\u201d or language headquarters, extracting meaning across different languages.<\/p>\n \u201cWe found that when bilinguals adjusted words to fit a grammatical context, for example, changing a singular noun into a plural noun, the same pattern of brain activity appeared across both English and Spanish,\u201d Blanco-Elorrieta told MNT.<\/p>\n \u201cThis suggests that, rather than building separate systems for each language, the brain may rely on a shared neural mechanism for carrying out similar grammatical operations across languages,\u201d they explained.<\/p>\n The most fascinating takeaway, perhaps, is that this shows how flexible and agile the human brain can be, as it readapts and restructures existing systems in order to \u201cflex\u201d as many language muscles as necessary; that is, it is economical, efficient, and has potential for endless adaptability.<\/p>\n Blanco-Elorrieta told us as much:<\/p>\n \u201cOur results suggest that the brain can reuse the same neural machinery to perform the same grammatical computation across languages, even when the words themselves are different. More broadly, this may reflect a general principle of brain organization: Whenever possible, the brain may build flexible neural systems that can be reused across different contexts rather than creating entirely separate mechanisms for each task.\u201d<\/p>\n While Chen and Blanco-Elorrieta\u2019s study did not look at the implications for cognitive training and abilities, other researchers have turned their attention to the ways in which bilingualism may help keep the brain young.<\/p>\n Also in 2025, an international team of researchers led by Lucia Amoruso<\/a>, PhD, Deputy Scientific Director and Group Leader at the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL) in San Sebastian, Spain conducted cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of data from participants across 27 countries in Europe, looking at the relationship between multilingualism and biological aging.<\/p>\n The study, which included a total of 86,149 participants, used the biobehavioral aging clock framework<\/a> to gauge whether being able to speak more than one language could, in some way, help keep people younger for longer.<\/p>\n The findings \u2014 featured in Nature Aging<\/a> in November 2025 \u2014 indicated that, in countries where a large part of the population was able to speak more than one language, people were 2.17 times less likely to experience accelerated aging.<\/p>\n At the same time, monolinguals were more than twice as likely to experience early aging.<\/p>\n \u201cOur results provide strong evidence that multilingualism functions as a protective factor for healthy aging. Language learning and use engage core brain networks related to attention, memory, and executive control \u2014 as well as social interaction \u2014 mechanisms that may reinforce resilience throughout life,\u201d senior author Agust\u00edn Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez<\/a>, PhD, a professor of Global Brain Health at Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland, said in a press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of the more striking findings of the study was that the effect appeared to be cumulative \u2014 that is, the more languages a person mastered, the slower they appeared to age.<\/p>\n \u201cThe protective effect was cumulative\u2014the more languages people spoke, the greater their protection against aging-related decline,\u201d Amorouso commented in the press release.<\/p>\n They presented a follow-up analysis conducted on data collected from a smaller subset of participants to the initial study. They looked for associations between a person\u2019s ability to speak multiple languages and brain aging.<\/p>\n Once again, they identified positive results: The more languages a person was able to speak, the lower the difference between their brain age, and their biological age. That is, multilinguals\u2019 brains stayed younger for longer. <\/p>\n \u201cIn simple terms, people who spoke more languages tended to have brains that looked younger than expected for their chronological age,\u201d explained Amorouso in a press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe effect was not only related to the number of languages spoken. Higher language proficiency and earlier acquisition of a second language were also associated with more delayed brain aging,\u201d she went on to add.<\/p>\n Commenting on the study findings, Christina Dalla<\/a>, PhD, professor or pharmacology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and chair of the FENS Forum communication committee, who was not involved in this research, noted in the press release:<\/p>\n \u201cThis study suggests that learning a second, third or fourth language could help our brains to stay younger for longer, and the earlier we start, the better. There are many good reasons for learning another language at any age \u2014 social, cultural and for the health of your brain \u2014 so we should support language learning at school and throughout life, even if it\u2019s hard.\u201d<\/p>\n Bilingualism may even help protect the brain from cognitive damage following serious illness, according to evidence from a study conducted by John G. Grundy<\/a>, PhD, co-founder and executive director of the Experience-Related Neuroplasticity (ERN) Institute in Toronto, ON, Canada, and Melanie Pujols-Beltran, from Binghamton University in New York. <\/p>\n This study \u2014 whose findings appeared in PNAS<\/a> in June 2026 \u2014 looked at how bilingualism might influence executive function, including processes such as working memory.<\/p>\n To do so, the researchers who conducted it took the example of individuals who had experienced COVID-19<\/a>, severe cases of which have caused long-lasting cognitive impairment<\/a>. Grundy and Pujols-Beltran asked a deceptively simple question: Were bilingual people who experienced COVID-19 less likely to risk cognitive impairment in the aftermath?<\/p>\n The researchers analyzed data from 312 participants aged 18\u201380 years \u2014 of whom 84 were aged 18 to 29, 124 aged 30 to 59, and 104 aged 60 and over \u2014 who were self-reportedly spoke two languages.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this study, we asked whether bilingual experience might help explain why some older adults showed better cognitive resilience after COVID-19 than others,\u201d Grundy told MNT.<\/p>\n \u201cWe focused on executive functions, which are the mental abilities that help people manage attention, switch between tasks, hold information in mind, and respond flexibly when circumstances change,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n The researchers reached a heartening conclusion: Older adults who were fluent in two languages fared better, from a cognitive point of view, after COVID-19, than those who had lower fluency across languages.<\/p>\n \u201cIn particular,\u201d said Grundy, \u201cearlier and richer bilingual experience was associated with greater resilience on tasks that require flexible control of attention. Put simply, older adults with stronger bilingual experience showed less evidence of executive-function disruption after COVID-19 than those with less bilingual experience.\u201d<\/p>\n However, he cautioned that this does not suggest that bilingualism is a cure-all, or a fail-proof method of keeping cognitive decline at bay. \u201cRather, [the] findings suggest that bilingual experience may be one contributor to cognitive resilience\u201d out of many, he told us.<\/p>\n Grundy hypothesized that:<\/p>\n \u201cManaging more than one language over many years may repeatedly exercise the systems that help the brain select relevant information, manage competing demands, and adapt attention to changing contexts. Over time, that kind of experience may help the brain maintain function when challenged by illness, aging, or other sources of cognitive stress.\u201d<\/p>\n Grundy and Pujols-Beltran\u2019s study did not delve into the underlying biological mechanisms that might explain the link between bilingualism and a resilient brain. Still, Grundy ventured to surmise that \u201cbilingualism may remodel the brain through repeated, context-dependent demands on attention and control.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cManaging more than one language requires the brain to select the appropriate language, regulate competition from the other language, monitor context, and adjust behavior depending on the speaker, setting, and communicative goal,\u201d he explained. \u201cOver time, those demands may remodel the systems that support executive function.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe mechanism I find most plausible is not a single \u2018bilingualism area\u2019 of the brain,\u201d he told us. Rather, he hypothesized, \u201cit is a dynamic, experience-dependent remodeling of distributed control networks: stronger communication among regions, more efficient allocation of control, and better context-sensitive shifting between effortful and more automatic processing.\u201d<\/p>\n For Grundy, what matters, based on the findings of this research, is not just how many languages a person speaks but also how and how often they use them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe relevant factor may not be the number of languages alone, but how those languages are used,\u201d he suggested. \u201cFor example, someone who actively uses two languages every day across different contexts may experience stronger cognitive demands than someone who knows several languages but rarely uses them. Age of acquisition, proficiency, frequency of use, switching between languages, and social context may all matter.\u201d<\/p>\n To conclude, it may all be about \u201cflexing those mental muscles\u201d as often as possible by frequently exposing them to the challenge of decoding different languages. According to Grundy:<\/p>\n \u201cThe more important question is probably not simply \u2018How many languages does someone know?\u2019 but rather \u2018How deeply, flexibly, and regularly are those languages integrated into everyday life?\u2019 If additional languages increase the need for flexible selection, context monitoring, and adaptive control, then they may contribute to the same kind of experience-dependent brain remodeling that we think may support resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking more than one language fluently doesn\u2019t just feel like it deeply changes the brain, it does actually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2992,5963,103,61,60],"class_list":["post-578717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-aging","tag-brain-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}