Neuroscientists Studied More Than 80,000 People and Found That Speaking Multiple Languages Might Slow Down Brain Aging

An enormous analysis of data from a broad array of participants found an association between multilingualism and cognitive aging

Margherita Bassi - Daily Correspondent

November 19, 2025 5:14 p.m.

New research suggests multilingualism may slow cognitive aging.  Freepik

When it comes to healthy brain aging, advice usually includes eating well, staying active and maintaining social connections. New evidence, however, has added an extra task to the list—learning another language.

Researchers found that speaking multiple languages may be associated with a reduced risk of accelerated cognitive aging. Their study, published on November 10 in the journal Nature Aging, indicates that encouraging multilingualism could be a beneficial public health strategy.

While some previous studies have indicated that speaking multiple languages can help guard memory and attention, the overall takeaway has been fairly inconclusive because of small sample sizes, inadequate ways of measuring aging and other factors. By analyzing survey data from more than 86,000 healthy individuals ages 51 to 90 in 27 countries across Europe, the team behind the recent paper avoided some of these pitfalls.

“The effects of multilingualism on aging have always been controversial, but I don’t think there has been a study of this scale before, which seems to demonstrate them quite decisively,” Christos Pliatsikas, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Reading in England who was not involved in the study, tells Nature’s Katie Kavanagh.

The research team behind the new work determined the difference between each participant’s actual chronological age, and their predicted age based on health and lifestyle factors. If someone’s predicted age is much higher than their chronological age, they are aging faster than expected, which may heighten their risk for age-related diseases, per Euronews’ Amber Louise Bryce.

Scientists examined each participant’s gap between their chronological and predicted ages in relation to the number of languages they spoke, based on self-reporting.

Computer analyses suggested that multilingual speakers are about half as likely to experience accelerated aging compared with those who speak only one language. The protective effect of multilingualism remained when the researchers accounted for country-level linguistic, physical, social and sociopolitical factors, such as air quality and gender equality. And the more languages one speaks, the better.

“Each additional language provided measurable protection,” Agustín Ibáñez, a study co-author and neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin, tells Euronews. “Speaking several languages continuously exercises multiple systems. It forces you to manage attention, inhibit interference, and switch between linguistic rules, all of which strengthen the networks that tend to weaken with age,” he adds.

Fun fact: Creative hobbies may help keep your brain young, too

Regularly making art, music and even playing certain video games might delay brain aging. These hobbies may even be better than traditional cognitive exercises, such as puzzles, because creative thinking requires more areas of the brain.

Many brain health recommendations focus on reducing damage accumulated by the brain across a lifetime through lifestyle changes, but the new study suggests that simply speaking more languages can improve how well the brain compensates for damage, Etu Ma'u, a psychiatrist at the University of Auckland who did not participate in the study, says in an expert reaction to the study compiled by the Science Media Centre (New Zealand). In light of the new findings, he worries that proposed cuts to teaching the Māori Indigenous people’s language in New Zealand schools “could have unintended effects on brain health and aging.”

The paper’s results ultimately urge policymakers to integrate language learning into their health and education strategies, with particular significance for English-speaking countries. While 50 to 70 percent of the world is multilingual, most native English speakers are monolingual, Stephen May, a Māori and Indigenous education scholar at the University of Auckland who also was not involved in the study, explains in the same expert reaction.

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