Bilingualism provides a neural reserve for aging populations

It has been postulated that bilingualism may act as a cognitive reserve and recent behavioral evidence shows that bilinguals are diagnosed with dementia about 4–5 years later compared to monolinguals. In the present study, we investigated the neural basis of these putative protective effects in a gr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuropsychologia 2015-03, Vol.69, p.201-210
Main Authors: Abutalebi, Jubin, Guidi, Lucia, Borsa, Virginia, Canini, Matteo, Della Rosa, Pasquale A., Parris, Ben A., Weekes, Brendan S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aged
Aging - pathology
Aging - psychology
Bilingualism
Brain - pathology
Cognitive Reserve
Ex-Gaussian analysis
Female
Gray Matter - pathology
Humans
Language Tests
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Multilingualism
Neural reserve
Neuropsychological Tests
Organ Size
Reaction Time
Voxel based morphometry
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Summary:It has been postulated that bilingualism may act as a cognitive reserve and recent behavioral evidence shows that bilinguals are diagnosed with dementia about 4–5 years later compared to monolinguals. In the present study, we investigated the neural basis of these putative protective effects in a group of aging bilinguals as compared to a matched monolingual control group. For this purpose, participants completed the Erikson Flanker task and their performance was correlated to gray matter (GM) volume in order to investigate if cognitive performance predicts GM volume specifically in areas affected by aging. We performed an ex-Gaussian analysis on the resulting RTs and report that aging bilinguals performed better than aging monolinguals on the Flanker task. Bilingualism was overall associated with increased GM in the ACC. Likewise, aging induced effects upon performance correlated only for monolinguals to decreased gray matter in the DLPFC. Taken together, these neural regions might underlie the benefits of bilingualism and act as a neural reserve that protects against the cognitive decline that occurs during aging. •Aging affects cognitive performance of bilinguals less as compared to monolinguals.•Aging induced effects correlate only for monolinguals to decreased gray matter in the prefrontal cortex.•Bilingualism is associated with increased gray matter in the ACC.•Bilingualism provides a neural reserve during aging.
ISSN:0028-3932
1873-3514
DOI:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.01.040