New study shows how bilingualism can make the brain be more efficient

Bonjour, Hi!

Bilingualism has increased in Quebec and a new study shows that speaking more than one language can affect the brains efficiency and connectivity in a positive way, especially when it’s been learned early on.

“When the brain is wiring itself through infancy or early child development, it develops a system for language. So if you have two inputs from different languages, it might build an architecture that is more optimal for learning these languages,” said Xiaoqian Chai, Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University.

When the brain is wiring itself through infancy or early child development, it develops a system for language. So if you have two inputs from different languages, it might build an architecture that is more optimal for learning these languages. 

The study was conducted by the Montreal Neurological Institute Hospital – part of the McGill University Health Centre, the University of Ottawa and the University of Zaragoza in Spain. 151 participants who spoke English, French, or both, were recruited by scientists, who recorded the age of when the participants learned their second language.

“If you’re exposed to two languages since birth, your brain has this higher connectivity or higher efficiency,” said Chai.

Past studies have looked at the positive effects of learning a second language on health aging, attention span and recovery from brain injuries, but only focused on specific regions of the brain. This study differs as it used resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan participants which helped to record whole-brain connectivity.

“They’re just resting and not doing anything in particular. So this kind of, kind of brain signal, we can look at basically how, you know, one part of the brain is interacting with the other so then we’re able to have this measure of intrinsic connectivity from each of these pairs of hundreds of regions. Then we can calculate, you know, within these connections, how many steps it takes from one region to the other,” Chai explains.

Some agree that being bilingual is important. 

“With your brains neurons, you use them or lose them. So when you’re bilingual, you’re constantly firing up the brain by switching between languages,” explains one woman.

“Oui, je suis bilingue; je suis capable de passer de français to English easily, like that,” said one Montrealer.

Chai encourages parents to teach their child two languages early on.

“I think our study shows that the brain is, you know, very plastic, and if you throw two languages at your brain early on, the brain can not only handle it, it actually makes it better. So don’t be afraid to, like, teach two languages or more early on. It’s a good thing,” she said.