November 10, 2025 The publication of Nature
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03677-2 informed: Knowledge of several languages can slow down brain aging and prevent cognitive decline, the researchers concluded after analyzing data from more than 80,000 people from 27 European countries.
"We wanted to understand whether knowing multiple languages can actually slow down the aging process, which is one of the most controversial issues in neuroscience," explained co—author Agusin Ibanez, a neuroscientist at the University of Adolfo Ibanez in Santiago, Chile.
An international group of scientists has found that bilinguals are two times less likely to experience signs of accelerated biological aging than those who speak only one language. The study included 86,000 participants aged 51 to 90 years. This work was the largest in the field and, according to the researchers, demonstrated for the first time a stable link between knowledge of several languages and slowing cognitive aging. Christos Pliatsikas, a cognitive neuroscientist from the University of Reading (UK), called the results "a breakthrough in understanding the mechanisms of brain aging."
"Even one additional language reduces the risk of accelerated aging, and with two or three languages, the effect becomes noticeably stronger," Ibanez emphasized. Susan Tubner-Rhodes, a psychologist at Auburn University, added that such data "should inspire people to learn new languages or use those they already know more actively." In her opinion, this is "an affordable way to maintain brain health in adulthood."
