Being bilingual helps you tackle dementia
By: Team Ifairer | Posted: 10-01-2017
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They found that monolinguals recruited a larger circuit with multiple connections, whereas bilinguals recruited a smaller circuit that was more appropriate for the required information.
The participants did a task that required them to focus on visual information (the colour of an object) while ignoring spatial information (the position of the object).
The research team observed that the monolingual brain allocates a number of regions linked to visual and motor function and interference control, which are located in the frontal lobes. This means that the monolingual brain needs to recruit multiple brain regions to do the task.
"After years of daily practice managing interference between two languages, bilinguals become experts at selecting relevant information and ignoring information that can distract from a task," said Ana Ines Ansaldo from University of Montreal.