Recent research shows that speaking a second language may delay the onset of dementia. In a paper published in Neurology earlier this month, researchers wrote that bilingual patients in their study developed dementia 4.5 years later than those who spoke only one language.
While the investigators did not include Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients in their research, the findings are interesting since some individuals with PD do develop dementia later in their disease. Also of note, they found that speaking more than two languages provided no additional benefit.
