13 years if you speak 4 languages, 6 years for two languages:
> The study found that those who spoke two languages had brains that appeared around six years younger than those who spoke only one language. People who spoke three languages had brains that appeared around seven years younger, and for those who spoke four languages, their brains appeared about 13 years younger.
From the article: "the earlier you speak them, the better"
I don't think that this quite matches the notion that learning is the brain's way of exercising, if learning/exercising as a child prevents aging more than learning/exercising as an adult.
Imagine if we could get all of our physical exercising in as children and become lazy as adults. ;-)
An alternative hypothesis might be that conversation is the brain's way of exercising.
13 years if you speak 4 languages, 6 years for two languages:
> The study found that those who spoke two languages had brains that appeared around six years younger than those who spoke only one language. People who spoke three languages had brains that appeared around seven years younger, and for those who spoke four languages, their brains appeared about 13 years younger.
> they could not rule out the potential influence of other factors that may have an impact on the brain, such as lifestyle and social engagement.
Social engagement has been shown in many ways to be crucial to health.
Learning is the brains way of exercising, though I believe you genuinely need to want to learn something which helps in the slowing of ageing part
From the article: "the earlier you speak them, the better"
I don't think that this quite matches the notion that learning is the brain's way of exercising, if learning/exercising as a child prevents aging more than learning/exercising as an adult.
Imagine if we could get all of our physical exercising in as children and become lazy as adults. ;-)
An alternative hypothesis might be that conversation is the brain's way of exercising.
Link to the actual research?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-025-01000-2
One thing that stood out to me some years ago and I found interesting is that depending on the language I'm using my thought patterns kind of change.
Putting in another term, I think differently in different languages.
This phenomenon is referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity