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. The team had previously published research suggesting that people living in countries where multilingualism is common may age more slowly.
For the latest work, they focused on people from the Basque region of Spain who spoke between one and four languages, using different combinations of Spanish, Basque, French and English. To measure brain aging, the researchers first studied 728 people and created a 'brain aging clock'. They used magnetoencephalography, a method that detects the faint magnetic fields produced when brain cells are active.
Artificial intelligence was then used to analyze patterns of brain activity across people of different ages. This allowed the researchers to estimate what typical brain connectivity looks like at different points in life. They next applied the clock to a separate group of 144 people to estimate each person's 'brain age'.
Four Languages Linked to a 13 Year Difference When the researchers compared participants' actual ages with their estimated brain ages, they found a striking pattern. People who spoke two languages had brains that appeared about six years younger than those of people who spoke only one language. Those who spoke three languages had brains that appeared about seven years younger.
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