People who speak four languages may have brains that look thirteen years younger, new study finds
A brain-imaging study presented at the FENS Forum 2026 found that people who speak four languages had brains that appeared about thirteen years younger than their real age, per the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (via ScienceDaily).
Researchers led by Dr. Lucia Amoruso of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, working with teams from the Latin American Brain Health Institute at Universidad Adolfo Ibanez (Chile), the Cognitive Neuroscience Center at Universidad de San Andres (Argentina), and the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin, built a 'brain aging clock' using magnetoencephalography data from 728 people. Applied to 144 multilingual adults from Spain's Basque Country who spoke combinations of Spanish, Basque, French and English, the clock found brains appeared about six years younger in people who spoke two languages, seven years younger for three languages, and about thirteen years younger for four languages. The effect was stronger with earlier language acquisition and higher fluency. The findings were presented at the FENS Forum 2026 and reported by the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies via ScienceDaily.