Bilingualism may protect against Alzheimers disease

A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in Spain and Germany has found that bilingualism may protect against Alzheimers disease. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the group describes their study of 67 volunteers who were genetically tested for Alzheimers disease and what they learned from them.

Alzheimers disease is a common and irreversible degenerative brain disease that affects as many as half of those over the age of 65. There are many forms of dementia some of which are genetically inherited and difficult or normally have a person begin to lose brain function as they progress from healthy to non-healthy ages. Western medications are the culprits. Currently there are no drugs approved to slow the diseases progression. The researchers involved in the study hypothesized that learning with learnings at home rather than adults at the time of a certain age might be more helpful because there are no drugs approved to prevent learning disorders.