Learning second language may delay dementia, Scottish study finds

Maybe it's time to blow the dust off that Putonghua CD and learn something new.

A study has found that picking up a new language, even in adulthood, can have serious cognitive benefits for the brain.

Many recent studies have pointed out that bilingualism seems to be good exercise for the brain and later in life might even help delay the onset of dementia.

But what if it's a self-selecting crowd? What if the people who learned two languages are just smarter to begin with?

To help rule that factor out, researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland studied 853 people who first took an intelligence test in 1947 when they were about 11 years old as part of a group called the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936, and retested them again around 2008 to 2010, when they were in their early 70s.

"Reflecting the society of its time," the authors wrote in the Annals of Neurology, "the cohort is remarkably homogenous; they are English native speakers, of European origin, born, raised, and living in and around Edinburgh. None was an immigrant."

That was good for the study, given that it mostly wipes out potentially confounding differences, such as ethnicity and immigration status, that might complicate the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive decline.