Biology enters the scene—a new perspective on bilingualism, cognition, and dementia

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• 作者：Thomas H. Bak^a ; ^b ; ^{thomas.bak@ed.ac.uk} ; Ian Robertson^c
• 关键词：Bilingualism ; Alzheimer disease ; Cognitive reserve ; Noradrenergic pathways
• 刊名：Neurobiology of Aging
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：50
• 期：Complete
• 页码：iii-iv
• 全文大小：171 K
• 卷排序：50

文摘

The question of whether bilingualism can influence cognitive functions in healthy aging as well as in brain diseases is currently a topic of an intense debate. In a study published in this issue of the “Neurobiology of Ageing”, Estanga et al. are breaking new ground by combining cognitive and biological approaches. Based on the data from the Guipuzkoa Alzheimer Project, they report that, compared with monolinguals, early bilinguals are not only characterized by a better cognitive performance in several domains and a lower prevalence of Alzheimer's disease but also by lower levels of t-tau in their cerebrospinal fluid. We suggest that sustained activation of noradrenergic signaling pathways associated with bilingualism could provide a possible mechanism linking results of this study with previous observations of delayed onset of dementia in bilinguals.