Multilingual people may have brains up to 13 years younger

People who speak more than one language may have brains that appear younger than expected for their age, according to research presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum 2026.

The brain depends on billions of nerve cells constantly communicating with one another. As people get older, those connections can weaken, contributing to slower thinking and declines in memory.

The new findings suggest that multilingual experience may help offset some of those age-related changes. People who spoke more languages tended to have younger-looking brains, and the effect also appeared stronger among those who learned another language earlier and became more proficient.

The research was presented by Dr. Lucia Amoruso of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language in San Sebastián, Spain. She worked with researchers from the Latin American Brain Health Institute at the Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, Chile, the Cognitive Neuroscience Center at the Universidad de San Andres, Argentina, and the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.