A new study presented at the 2026 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum examines how mastering multiple languages ??can slow brain aging.

Through an analysis of the brain activity of hundreds of speakers in the Basque region of Spain, it was shown that bilinguals have a younger brain age compared to monolinguals, reported Fox News Digital.

The findings of the study, after including speakers of Spanish, Basque, French and English, and using artificial intelligence to estimate the “brain age” of each participant, based on connectivity patterns, indicated that:

A benefit at any stage of life

Dr. Tommy Wood, neuroscientist, performance consultant and author of The Stimulated Mind: Protect Your Brain from Dementia and Stay Alert at Any Age, emphasized to Fox that there is no age limit to benefit from language learning. He points out that even adults who did not learn several languages ????as children can experience improvements in cognitive functions after a short period of learning. He encourages you to learn another language, since it is never too late.

In addition to the positive effects on cognition, language learning also promotes social participation and enriches the brain's ability to assimilate new information. Wood advises adults not to be discouraged by mistakes, as they are essential for learning and neuroplasticity.

Despite the promising results, the researchers acknowledged several limitations to their study, including the impact of factors such as lifestyle and social interaction, which could have influenced the results.

Language learning and cognitive skills

Language learning is often associated with improvements in memory, attention, and mental flexibility, because it forces the brain to remember vocabulary, apply rules, and switch between linguistic systems. It can also promote problem solving and decision making, since practicing another language trains executive control and the inhibition of automatic responses.

How they relate. Learning a language not only adds new words: it also requires retaining information, detecting patterns and selecting the correct way to express yourself in each context. This mental exercise can strengthen working memory, which is the ability to maintain and manipulate information for short periods. In problem-solving tasks, such training can translate into greater flexibility to try different strategies and adapt to new rules.

What the evidence says. Popular research and several scientific summaries agree that bilingualism is related to better results in attention, task switching, and inhibitory control. However, the size of these effects is not always uniform, and some studies find more modest or variable results depending on age, frequency of language use, and educational context. In other words, there is a real relationship, but it should not be exaggerated as if learning languages ??automatically makes a person “smarter” in all areas.

In practice. If you study a language constantly, you are probably training several skills at the same time: memory, attention, self-correction, and handling interference between languages. A simple example is remembering a shopping list and at the same time choosing between correct synonyms or grammatical structures; This double effort forces the brain to better organize information. That is why language learning is considered a complete cognitive activity, more similar to mental training than simple memorization.