I speak Spanish and a little English.

I speak two and I'm learning another one with Duolingo.

Je parle bien français, russe et tchèque.

And if you are one of those people, you are doing your brain some good.

In fact, a new Concordia study suggests bilingualism could delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease by up to five years.

This is an MRI image of a brain.

The lead author of the study led us into the university's Cognition, Aging and Psychophysiology lab.

Why were you interested in looking at bilingualism or multilingualism and what it does to the brain?

Currently, at this time, there is no effective pharmaceutical treatment or cure that is approved in Canada for Alzheimer's disease.

A lot of the focus in the research community has been on prevention.

The researchers compared different groups of monolingual and bilingual older adults focusing on the size of one brain structure.

The hippocampus there, which is a brain region that is most typically affected in Alzheimer's disease and is critical for learning and memory abilities.

The groups range from varying cognitive abilities from normal to at risk to having Alzheimer's.

What did your study find?

When we compared the size of the hippocampus across bilinguals who were cognitively healthy, those at greater risk, as well as those who had Alzheimer's disease, the size of the hippocampus seemed to be the same across all those groups.

Whereas in the monolinguals, we saw a decrease in size from the healthy older adults to those at greater risk and then to those with Alzheimer's disease.

So what this suggested to us was that being bilingual, speaking more than one language may actually lead to greater, what we call greater brain maintenance.

How?

When you know or are able to speak more than one language, the idea is that those two or more languages are sort of always competing in your brain.

And so when we are speaking, having a conversation and listening, the brain is actually actively having to manage those two languages and exert this extra language control.

So it's like you're working out your brain.

Sort of.

I guess you could think of it that way.

I think it's good to keep your brain, you know, keep those neurological pathways expanding.

My parents still live in the UK and they also learn French for when they come over and visit the grandkids.

They're 75 and 80 and I think it keeps them pretty fit too.

But what about other activities meant to be good for the mind?

How do they compare to knowing many languages at different levels of proficiency?

Larger scale studies are needed, but…

What we know from our study right now is that if we were to hold all these other factors constant across bilinguals and monolinguals, being bilingual still seems to matter and have an effect on the brain.

I do a little bit every day and it's sinking in.

The Concordia researchers are digging deeper into their findings, but if you want to protect your brain as you age, if you know more than one language, chances are you are one step ahead.