ArticleBrain structure & function2021
Poorer clinical outcomes for older adult monolinguals when matched to bilinguals on brain health.
Article in Brain structure & function, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Multifactorial approaches to study bilingualism in the aging population: Past, present, future.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- Does Language Distance Modulate the Contribution of Bilingualism to Cognitive Reserve in Seniors? A Systematic Review.American journal of Alzheimer's disease and other dementiasPooled it
- Language, Immigration, Race and Cognitive Health: Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences (KHANDLE) Study.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2026Article
- Cognitive and brain reserve in bilingual speakers with clinical AD variants.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Rethinking language, cognition and assessment in psychosis: How bilingualism challenges psychiatry and how natural language processing can help.Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- Use of Multiple Languages Provides Cognitive Reserve Amidst Age-Related White Matter Changes.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2025Article
- Music training and language learning improve verbal memory performance but do not change white matter characteristics of the splenium: a longitudinal DTI study.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Protective effect of bilingualism on aging, MCI, and dementia: A community-based study.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2024Article
- Examining the relation between bilingualism and age of symptom onset in frontotemporal dementia.Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) · 2024Article
- Brain Health and Cognition in Older Adults: Roadmap and Milestones towards the Implementation of Preventive Strategies.Brain sciences · 2024Review
- The effects of bilingualism on hippocampal volume in ageing bilinguals.Brain structure & function · 2022Article
- The Contribution of Bilingualism to Cognitive Functioning and Regional Brain Volume in Normal and Abnormal Aging.Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) · 2022Article
- The Nuance of Bilingualism as a Reserve Contributor: Conveying Research to the Broader Neuroscience Community.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Bilingualism and Aging: Implications for (Delaying) Neurocognitive Decline.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Review
- Bilingualism: Pathway to Cognitive Reserve.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2021Review
- Bilingualism as a Contributor to Cognitive Reserve: What it Can do and What it Cannot do.American journal of Alzheimer's disease and other dementiasArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Previous studies have reported bilingualism to be a proxy of cognitive reserve (CR) based on evidence that bilinguals express dementia symptoms ~ 4 years later than monolinguals yet present with greater neuropathology at time of diagnosis when clinical levels are similar. The current study provides new evidence supporting bilingualism's contribution to CR using a novel brain health matching paradigm. Forty cognitively normal bilinguals with diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance images recruited from the community were matched with monolinguals drawn from a pool of 165 individuals in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database. White matter integrity was determined for all participants using fractional anisotropy, axial diffusivity, and radial diffusivity scores. Propensity scores were obtained using white matter measures, sex, age, and education as predictive covariates, and then used in one-to-one matching between language groups, creating a matched sample of 32 participants per group. Matched monolinguals had poorer clinical diagnoses than that predicted by chance from a theoretical null distribution, and poorer cognitive performances than matched bilinguals as measured by scores on the MMSE. The findings provide support for the interpretation that bilingualism acts as a proxy of CR such that monolinguals have poorer clinical and cognitive outcomes than bilinguals for similar levels of white matter integrity even before clinical symptoms appear.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.