Learning a second language brings the same benefits to the brain as being bilingual , according to a latest study carried out by a team of researchers from the School of Psychology at the University of Kent (United Kingdom) and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The work reveals that speaking two languages has the same positive effect on the brain as bilingualism, regardless of the age at which the second language is learned and how it is used. To demonstrate this, the scientists analyzed the brain images of a group of volunteers, bilingual, not bilingual but knowledgeable in two languages, and a third monolingual group , observing that the first two groups had the same degrees of myelination of the axons, that is, greater integrity in the white matter of the brain, which provides greater efficiency in the transmission of information or knowledge. These results were not repeated in the group of people who only spoke one language.
“We use an MRI method called Diffusion-Tensor Imaging (DTI), which analyzes the movement of water molecules through the white matter of the brain. When we detected a greater difficulty for the water to move through the white matter, we assumed that it had a better ‘isolation’ , that is, a greater myelination of the axons ”, explains Christos Pliatsikas, co-author of the study to Sinc.
These benefits on the brain of learning English as a second language, for example, can occur even in adulthood without permanent use of it. Thus, learning another language from an early age or doing it at an advanced age brings the same structural changes to the white matter of the brain.
