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Bilingualism provides a neural reserve for aging populations.

Abutalebi, J., Guidi, L., Borsa, V., Canini, M., Della Rosa, P.A., Parris, B. and Weekes, B., 2015. Bilingualism provides a neural reserve for aging populations. Neuropsychologia, 69, 201 - 210 .

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DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.01.040

Abstract

It has been postulated that bilingualism may act as a cognitive reserve and recent behavioral evidence shows that bilinguals are diagnosed with dementia about 4-5 years later compared to monolinguals. In the present study, we investigated the neural basis of these putative protective effects in a group of aging bilinguals as compared to a matched monolingual control group. For this purpose, participants completed the Erikson Flanker task and their performance was correlated to gray matter (GM) volume in order to investigate if cognitive performance predicts GM volume specifically in areas affected by aging. We performed an ex-Gaussian analysis on the resulting RTs and report that aging bilinguals performed better than aging monolinguals on the Flanker task. Bilingualism was overall associated with increased GM in the ACC. Likewise, aging induced effects upon performance correlated only for monolinguals to decreased gray matter in the DLPFC. Taken together, these neural regions might underlie the benefits of bilingualism and act as a neural reserve that protects against the cognitive decline that occurs during aging.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:0028-3932
Uncontrolled Keywords:Bilingualism ; Cognitive reserve ; Ex-Gaussian analysis ; Neural reserve ; Voxel based morphometry
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:22549
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:30 Sep 2015 15:06
Last Modified:14 Mar 2022 13:53

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