http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. A study conducted at the University of Granada and the University of York in Toronto, Canada, has revealed that bilingual children develop a better working memory –which holds, processes and updates information over short periods of time– than monolingual children. The working memory plays a major role in the execution of a wide range of activities, such as mental calculation (since we have to remember numbers and operate with them) or reading comprehension (given that it requires associating the successive concepts in a text). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-bilingual-children-memory-monolingual.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:11:53 EST news280577501 Seniors who have spoken two languages since childhood are faster than single-language speakers at switching from one task to another, according to a study published in the January 9 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Compared to their monolingual peers, lifelong bilinguals also show different patterns of brain activity when making the switch, the study found. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-cognitive-benefit-lifelong-bilingualism.html Neuroscience Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:00:01 EST news276874813 With immigration on the rise, the use of English as a second language is sweeping the world. People who have grown up speaking French, Italian, Mandarin or any other language are now expected to be able to communicate effectively using this new lingua franca. How understandable are they in this second language? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-accents-effective-simply-pronunciation.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:11:28 EST news268481478 A Northwestern University study that will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides the first biological evidence that bilinguals' rich experience with language in essence "fine-tunes" their auditory nervous system and helps them juggle linguistic input in ways that enhance attention and working memory. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-bilingualism-fine-tunes-attention.html Neuroscience Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:33:42 EST news255018803 New research explains how speaking more than one language may translate to better mental health. A paper published by Cell Press in the March 29th issue of the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences examines how being bilingual can offer protection from the symptoms of dementia, and also suggests that the increasing diversity in our world populations may have an unexpected positive impact on the resiliency of the adult brain. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-bilingual-wards-symptoms-dementia.html Alzheimer's disease & dementia Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:00:04 EST news252239962 Bilingual immigrants are healthier than immigrants who speak only one language, according to new research from sociologists at Rice University. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-bilingual-immigrants-healthier.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 15 Mar 2012 11:06:13 EST news251028300 Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital have found that people who speak more than one language have twice as much brain damage as unilingual people before they exhibit symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. It's the first physical evidence that bilingualism delays the onset of the disease. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-physical-evidence-bilingualism-onset-alzheimer.html Neuroscience Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:00:02 EST news237725979 When young children learn a second language, it strengthens their ability to pay attention to the right stuff, reports a new Cornell study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-bilingualism-boost-tots-minds.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 15 Jul 2011 04:33:59 EST news229923136 How do people who speak more than one language keep from mixing them up? How do they find the right word in the right language when being fluent in just one language means knowing about 30,000 words? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-bilingualism-big-brain.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 31 May 2011 11:45:44 EST news226061127