Learning Another Language May Slow Brain Aging, Huge New Study Finds
November 11, 2025
2 min reading
Learning another language could slow brain aging, important new study suggests
Large international study suggests being multilingual can slow cognitive aging
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Speaking multiple languages could slow brain aging and help prevent cognitive decline, according to a study of more than 80,000 people.
The work, published in Natural aging on November 10, suggests that multilingual people are half as likely to show signs of accelerated biological aging as those who speak only one language.
“We wanted to fill one of the most persistent gaps in aging research, namely whether multilingualism can actually delay aging,” says Agustín Ibáñez, study co-author and neuroscientist at the Adolfo Ibáñez University in Santiago, Chile. Previous research in this area has suggested that speaking multiple languages can improve cognitive functions such as memory and attention, which improves brain health as we age. But many of these studies rely on small sample sizes and use unreliable methods of measuring aging, leading to inconsistent and non-generalizable results.
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“The effects of multilingualism on aging have always been controversial, but I don’t think there has been a study of this scale before, which seems to demonstrate them quite decisively,” says Christos Pliatsikas, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Reading, UK. The results of the study could “bring a step change in the field,” he adds.
They might also “encourage people to go out and try to learn a second language, or keep that second language active,” says Susan Teubner-Rhodes, a cognitive psychologist at Auburn University in Alabama.
Long live the linguists
Researchers used a computational approach to explore the link between multilingualism and healthy aging in 86,000 healthy participants aged 51 to 90 in 27 European countries.
For each participant, they determined the biobehavioral age gap, the difference between their chronological age – the number of years they have lived – and their “predicted” age, which takes into account various physiological, lifestyle and socio-economic factors, ranging from cardiometabolic health to education level. A high biobehavioral age gap may be a sign that a person is aging particularly quickly – or slowly.
The researchers compared participants’ biobehavioral age gaps with the number of languages they spoke. This part of the data was based on self-report and therefore did not take into account language proficiency level.
Researchers found that people who spoke only one language were twice as likely to have a high biobehavioral age gap as those who spoke two or more languages. This effect increased with the number of additional languages spoken. “Just one additional language reduces the risk of accelerated aging. But when you speak two or three, this effect is greater,” says Ibáñez.
A study of this magnitude “really reinforces the interpretation that multilingualism, rather than other factors, protects us during aging,” says Teubner-Rhodes. “This was a very large and geographically diverse sample, which allowed them to control for a number of confounding factors that are typically present in multilingualism research, such as immigrant status and wealth.” Future research should include more diverse populations outside of Europe, she adds.
The researchers hope their findings will inspire policymakers to encourage language learning in education.
This article is reproduced with permission and has been published for the first time November 10, 2025.
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