Lifelong bilinguals have better brains than the rest of us, study says

Jealous of your bilingual friends' impressive skills ordering that specially prepared Peking duck? You should really be coveting their cognitive skills. Neuroscientists tracked the brain activity of older bilinguals and found that they were far sharper than monolinguals when changing tasks. Researchers haven't totally figured out why, but they think the mental gymnastics of switching between languages helps protect against age-related cognitive declines. Sorry, signing up for Mandarin at your local community college won't make you smarter now. To reap the benefits, you need to speak two languages every day from the tender age of 10 — it's the lifelong language-juggling that makes the difference. [Source]

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