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Learning a second language has a positive effect on the brain's neuroplasticity
This is the conclusion reached by European scientists after studying MRI images. When the brain forms neural connections more actively, thinking skills improve, which affects the rate of aging, the researchers noted.
The brains of bilinguals form significantly more neural connections. This is the conclusion reached by European scientists after studying MRI images. Some of the subjects spoke only French, another group spoke only English, and a third group knew both languages.
“Our study shows that learning a second language early in life helps create brain tissue that is more efficient in terms of functional connections,” the researchers say. They believe that learning a second language has a positive effect on the brain’s neuroplasticity, or the ability to create new connections within the brain. The higher this number, the better your thinking abilities, which affects how quickly you age.
So it can be assumed that people who study languages throughout their lives keep their brains in good shape longer. Svetlana Kolobova, a clinical psychologist, neuropsychologist, and lecturer at Moscow State University, says:
— There are two sides of the same coin. There are bilingual children, whose parents speak two different languages as their first language, and essentially this child has nowhere to go. So, as a rule, they start speaking a mixture of French and Nizhny Novgorod. They use words that are easy to pronounce in the language. Then comes the critical moment when the child goes to kindergarten, school and already has one language of communication, in which he begins to actively develop. Since the formation of language is a very complex and lengthy process, bilinguals sometimes have a hard time. If your child has developmental disabilities, he may not be able to speak at all. Or we'll talk later. In other words, the story is that we need more synaptic connections. The child already has them in abundance. For example, all he does in the first three years is remove unnecessary neural connections. He has them in abundance, and only what he needs for survival remains. Our brain is energy efficient. If a person does not need this language in life, his survival does not depend on it. He will not learn it. Forcing a child who has not yet mastered any language to study English, which is not used at home, essentially delays the development of the child's native language. What's interesting about this? However, one language always dominates - the one that the child will later study at school or university. - Is there still a sound idea that we need to train the brain so that it dies more slowly and forms more neural connections? - It's just biology. For example, some people are prone to age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease. If there are predispositions to this disease, you know that no matter how much you learn a foreign language, no matter what job you do, or even if you do crosswords, you will get Alzheimer's disease, right? Such brain training does not stop the process. Notice what happens when an athlete stops training. Of course, thank God that it works without intensive intervention from those who want to change everything in it in their own way. But he cannot achieve this except by overeating all kinds of dietary supplements in the hope of somehow gaining weight.
Adults, especially children, should be interested in the subject being studied. Without it, everything will be meaningless and little will remain in the memory, says neuropsychologist, candidate of psychological sciences Andrey Chistyakov.
A previous brain MRI study in the US found that teenage girls who experienced COVID-19 lockdowns aged faster than boys. After social distancing, girls’ brains grew an average of 4.2 years older than expected, while boys’ brains grew an average of 1.4 years older than expected.