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. 2020 Jan 10;12(1):11.
doi: 10.1186/s13195-020-0581-1.

A cross-sectional and longitudinal study on the protective effect of bilingualism against dementia using brain atrophy and cognitive measures

Víctor Costumero  1   2   3 , Lidon Marin-Marin  2 , Marco Calabria  1 , Vicente Belloch  4 , Joaquín Escudero  5 , Miguel Baquero  6 , Mireia Hernandez  7   8 , Juan Ruiz de Miras  9 , Albert Costa  1 , Maria-Antònia Parcet  2 , César Ávila  10
Affiliations

A cross-sectional and longitudinal study on the protective effect of bilingualism against dementia using brain atrophy and cognitive measures

Víctor Costumero et al. Alzheimers Res Ther. .

Abstract

Background: Evidence from previous studies suggests that bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve because bilinguals manifest the first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (AD) up to 5 years later than monolinguals. Other cross-sectional studies demonstrate that bilinguals show greater amounts of brain atrophy and hypometabolism than monolinguals, despite sharing the same diagnosis and suffering from the same symptoms. However, these studies may be biased by possible pre-existing between-group differences.

Methods: In this study, we used global parenchymal measures of atrophy and cognitive tests to investigate the protective effect of bilingualism against dementia cross-sectionally and prospectively, using a sample of bilinguals and monolinguals in the same clinical stage and matched on sociodemographic variables.

Results: Our results suggest that the two groups did not differ in their cognitive status at baseline, but bilinguals had less parenchymal volume than monolinguals, especially in areas related to brain atrophy in dementia. In addition, a longitudinal prospective analysis revealed that monolinguals lost more parenchyma and had more cognitive decline than bilinguals in a mean follow-up period of 7 months.

Conclusion: These results provide the first prospective evidence that bilingualism may act as a neuroprotective factor against dementia and could be considered a factor in cognitive reserve.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Bilingualism; Brain atrophy; Cognitive reserve; Mild cognitive impairment; Region-based morphometry.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Cross-sectional results. a Mean and standard error bars for global cognitive level measure. b Mean and standard error bars for parenchyma volume (cm3). The graph is stratified in order to show the contribution of gray matter and white matter. *Significant differences at a threshold of p < 0.05. c Region-based morphometry results. The figure shows the brain parcels of the LPBA40 atlas. Red circles show the areas with significant gray matter volume reduction in bilinguals compared to monolinguals (p < 0.05 FDR corrected). The color bar represents the corrected log-scale p value FDR applicable to each parcel
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Longitudinal results. a Mean and standard error bars for global cognitive level measures at the time of the first and second neuropsychological evaluations. b Mean and standard error bars for parenchyma volumes (cm3) at the time of the first and second scans
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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