9 ms·

Bilingual people are twice as likely to recover from a stroke, study finds

132 points by hunglee2 11y ago

blfr 11y ago
This switching offers practically constant brain training which may be a factor in helping stroke patients recover. Another hypothesis would be that being in better neural shape to being with allowed them to become bilingual. Can someone... obtain the full pdf? Do the authors try to control this factor?
- khgvljhkb 11y ago
  I'd wager most bilinguals are so not because they thought it would be a cool self-improvement project. I speak English because all the good movies are made in the US, and German because I live in Germany, and Swedish because that is what my mother and father spoke to me.
  - drd93 11y ago
    I would support your statement as well. I know three languages: one as my native language, other as my country's only official language, and the last one (English) is my general purpose language, meaning I use at to surf web, to study books, to watch films/series, to code, etc.. Would I learn any other language if I would be born in English society and English family? Doubt it. Maybe some other mainstream language just for fun, but it wouldn't count as bilingual as I wouldn't push myself hard enough to learn it.
    - nathanasmith 11y ago
      As a native English speaker, born and raised in the US, it is a lament of mine that I can't justify the enormous time and effort needed to become bilingual. I guess I could learn Spanish, but why? It would be primarily recreational. And the time spent could almost certainly be more productively used picking up some other useful skill. Maybe I should just do it anyway in light of the more abstract benefits that the article touts.
      - pjonesdotca 11y ago
        A side effect of living on a continent separated by two oceans and having one single language. It's far easier and practical in Canada to be bi-lingual as English/French are the official languages. Having spent a portion of my childhood in Europe I saw first hand how much of a difference their default state of speaking 2 or 3 languages has on a society. Trust me, learning a second language is worth the time.
      - jfaucett 11y ago
        "I guess I could learn Spanish, but why?" Where are you from in the US? Im from the Atlanta area and bilingual spanish/english. Most people I know from georgia, florida, even alabama can at least understand spanish just from being around it so much. I really think to not know spanish you would have to actively try to avoid it - especially if you are young and from the city. In atlanta you can easily live without knowing any english, when friends came from south america we always found people fluent in spanish most native (at Starbucks, McDonalds, Grocery Store, shopping, etc).
        nathanasmith 11y ago
        I'm in Florida now but I did live in Atlanta for a few years and, if pushed, yo puedo hablar espanol suficiente para un conversacion simple. La problema es que no tengo oportunidad para bastante practica para fluente. So, I'm kind of in this half and half limbo where I can understand and speak enough Spanish but not enough that any native Spanish speaker would actually want to have a conversation with me. And for the other person who brought up the buying and selling to Spanish speakers aspect, the vast vast majority of Spanish speakers I've ever came in contact with speak a hell of a lot better English than I speak Spanish so that doesn't really make sense in practice either.
        jarboot 11y ago
        >the vast vast majority of Spanish speakers I've ever came in contact with speak a hell of a lot better English than I speak Spanish so that doesn't really make sense in practice either. Don't forget that part of the reason that English is well known across the globe is because the US is a media powerhouse. The web is practically english, US blockbusters are seen worldwide, and it's essentially the language of international business.
  - blfr 11y ago
    There are however plenty of Germans who are not fluent in English despite having access to all the same cool American movies as you did.
    - kristiandupont 11y ago
      Movies in Germany are dubbed. (I imagine that GP is from Sweden and probably moved to Germany, given that's the language of his/her parents)
      - khgvljhkb 11y ago
        Ganz richtig, Ich bin Schwede. True, I'm Swedish. Ja, jag är svensk.
- phreeza 11y ago
  I think the PDF is open access? [0] Of course it is hard to control for 'neural shape', but they seem to control for both education and occupational status, which seem like pretty decent proxies to me. [0] http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/19/STROKEAHA.115.010418.full.pdf+html http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/19/STROK...
- AnAfrican 11y ago
  I bet most multilingual people didn't have to become mulitlingual.
barry-cotter 11y ago
Abstract of referenced journal article Background and Purpose—Bilingualism has been associated with slower cognitive aging and a later onset of dementia. In this study, we aimed to determine whether bilingualism also influences cognitive outcome after stroke. Methods—We examined 608 patients with ischemic stroke from a large stroke registry and studied the role of bilingualism in predicting poststroke cognitive impairment in the absence of dementia. Results—A larger proportion of bilinguals had normal cognition compared with monolinguals (40.5% versus 19.6%; P<0.0001), whereas the reverse was noted in patients with cognitive impairment, including vascular dementia and vascular mild cognitive impairment (monolinguals 77.7% versus bilinguals 49.0%; P<0.0009). There were no differences in the frequency of aphasia (monolinguals 11.8% versus bilinguals 10.5%; P=0.354). Bilingualism was found to be an independent predictor of poststroke cognitive impairment. Conclusions—Our results suggest that bilingualism leads to a better cognitive outcome after stroke, possibly by enhancing cognitive reserve. (Stroke. 2016;47:00-00. DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.115.010418.) Key Words: aphasia ◼ dementia, vascular ◼ language ◼ risk factors ◼ stroke http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/19/STROKEAHA.115.010418.full.pdf+html http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/19/STROK... Original press release http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2015/stroke-191115 http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2015/stroke-191115
- nonbel 11y ago
  This is probably some kind of testing artifact. Table 1 shows that 64.3% of monolinguals were literate compared to 92.9% of bilinguals. Then in the supplemental methods we see that illiterates took a different test than literates. They defined cognitive impairment as a score of under mean - 2*SD measured from groups consisting of ~80% literates: >"The process of adaptation included culturally appropriate modifications of the original English version of ACE-R by examining each item for cultural relevance, translatability, comparable difficulty and adaptability with an aim of tapping the domain identical to the original version. Translations and back translations, and pilot testing were done based on standard procedures.3 ACE-R was adapted for the illiterate population by modifying literacy dependent items.4 Normative data and cut off values in the local languages- Telugu and Hindi were developed by administering the test to healthy controls. Telugu control group subjects consisted 907 literates and 199 illiterates, and Hindi control group subjects consisted 436 literates and 109 illiterates. Mean and SD for total scores and sub-scores in each domain were calculated across 4 age groups (20-39, 40-59, 60-79, 80 and above), and three education levels (>12 years, 4-12 years, 0-3 years), using standard formulae of Mean-2SD. Impairment in cognition was defined if the score on the ACE-R sub-domains was less than 2.00 SD below the mean level of age and education-matched norms." Then we have the arbitrary age groups and education levels which makes this look p-hacked, there needs to be some assessment of how much those arbitrary choices affect the conclusions.
wangii 11y ago
great, I know both HTML and CSS, and some javascript. seriously though, I think it would also apply to programmers using both functional and procedural languages.
- wibr 11y ago
  I think most programmers can learn a new programming language to reasonable "fluency" in a few weeks, for natural languages it's more like a few years. Totally different except when you think of formal terms like vocabulary, syntax etc. which can be found in both and may have led to the term "programming language".
  - hollerith 11y ago
    The chairman of the department of English at my local community college told me that it takes the average student of English as a second language 7 years to get good enough that a native English speaker might want to have a conversation with the student.
    - adrianN 11y ago
      It depends on which languages you know. For native English speakers there is for example this ranking of language difficulty http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.go...
- yAnonymous 11y ago
  So you're quadrilingual? I got bad news for you...
grondilu 11y ago
Not quite related, but I'm wondering what it means to be bilingual. I mean, does the use of English on internet count? For instance, I'm French and I spend most of my time on the "english" internet, including YouTube, reddit, HN, IRC... I'd say 95% of my activity on the web is in English. I also watch american TV series and movies without subtitles. I understand english quite well and yet, I haven't spoken English for many years. Does that count?
- saint_fiasco 11y ago
  I'm imagining some poor anon or redditor getting a stroke and only being able to communicate through memes. I think if you can think in English, that counts as bilingual. Ever had a dream in English?
- 55555 11y ago
  I can read fluently in Thai but writing is nearly impossible. I can understand (listen) with significant fluency but speaking is much harder. These are four very different skills, trust me.
- arbitrage 11y ago
  Fluency in another language is typically understood to mean all aspects of the language ... reading, writing, speaking, and listening. You're not fully (bi|tri|quad)lingual without being able to do some part of those skills in another language. That being said, you don't need to be the worlds best writer or speaker. You just need to have those skills.
  - barkingcat 11y ago
    Certain languages are more difficult to master in the 4 quadrants that you refer to (read / write / speak / listen) - sometimes languages are much much more difficult to write than to read - it's important to keep those distinctions in mind when speaking about fluency in other languages because not all languages are like English / Roman / have an alphabet, and it's not fair to say someone is not "fluent" if they can't recall instantaneously how to write the thousands of characters that even a native-speaking child would be able to recall. I'd say someone is fluent if they can perform and understand communications via the various aspects of language, but I don't think you need to be able to express each one. (For example, being able to type Chinese on the computer via ping yin and fast computerized lookup is an expression of fluency, even though the person might not know how the stroke directions of the character would work if they had to write on paper unassisted)
AdmiralAsshat 11y ago
Strictly anecdotal, but I'll mention it anyway: My grandfather was bilingual, but his native tongue was Arabic. He held off dementia until his 90's, but when it finally set in, it hit hard. It got to the point where he often gave up trying to speak because he couldn't finish the sentence without forgetting a word he wanted and getting frustrated. Surprisingly, however, he often remembered the word in English and started speaking that instead. To use a computer analogy, it is as though the sector of his brain where the Arabic was stored had become corrupted, while the English sector was still readable.
- theviajerock 11y ago
  Very interesting anecdote.
- RobertoG 11y ago
  The same happens with my grandmother but the other way around. She doesn't speak her second language anymore, she has returned to the one of her childhood, but it seems like she understand it yet.
dahart 11y ago
It looks like there are multiple referenced sources of bilingualism contributing to "cognitive reserve". Pretty cool if there are direct tangible health benefits to learning! But twice as likely is a very big number in this context. It sounds like the population sample was all from Hyderabad, not a global sample. Is it possible environmental factors are present? Or perhaps socioeconomic factors -- I'd speculate that bilingual people are probably on average wealthier, leading to a wide range of possible benefits, including healthier diet, and better living conditions and location. I know it's armchair critique, but I just can't help but be a little skeptical of this headline.
Choronzon 11y ago
"even after taking into account other factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and age" But not IQ and social status,bilingual people are more likely to score higher on both and this could be an aspect of healthier cognitive functions rather than how many languages you know.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  Came here to say the same. Correlation is not indicative of causation. Bilingual people are more likely to be more upwardly mobile, and therefore likely have access to better care. Neurology probably has nothing to do with it.
djhn 11y ago
My gut reaction would be to control for wealth or income, which they do not. I am not very familiar with Indian demographics, but I would assume monolingual people represent the poorest of the population?
- zxexz 11y ago
  I've only been to India once, so obviously anything I say should be treated as purely anecdotal. In rural Karnataka, I did notice, that although literacy rates (writing/reading) weren't nearly as high among the poorest population, it seemed to be the norm that they knew Kannada along with at least one of Konkani, Tamil, Urdu and/or another local language. English was also very common, but not among the poorest.
- usrusr 11y ago
  My gut reaction: "metric used to measure stroke recovery favors bilinguals" The article mentions cognitive tasks that are likely to benefit on some level from "thinking in language". Duo clearly unrelated tasks like motor control also correlate? Is this really about brain activity keeping the system "fresh" and more capable of repair, or is it maybe just a simple matter of someone with "more words" pre-stroke having "more words" post-stroke? My wildly uneducated guess, illustrated with computer analogies: when the brain has to cope with multiple languages, "language thinking" overflows from dedicated to general purpose "hardware" and due to some evolutionary dice roll, the dedicated stuff tends to get taken out first in a stroke.
sunwooz 11y ago
A lot of people in India speak both English and Hindi, plus a host of other regional languages. "even after taking into account other factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and age" Did they take into account that people who speak multiple languages are potentially more financially secure and thus would have a healthier/more nutritional diet/lifestyle?
- sremani 11y ago
  In Hyderabad, people even with little education tend to converse in Telugu and Urdu/Hindi to a level a fluency. Ability to speak English is reflection of better social or economic status. You can still find a lot of people who speak two languages and who are not well off in HYD.
  - sunwooz 11y ago
    It just seems like a contentious area to test this on. America would be better considering many people are monolingual.
VikingCoder 11y ago
Si. Es muy bueno.
swsieber 11y ago
If you want a lot more information about stroke and linguistics, I highly recommend the book "One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir" It's about an older married couple, both wordsmiths by trades (linguistics professors? I can't remember). The husband has a stroke leaving him with a single word vocabulary. It documents what they did in his recovery process as well as mentions the various types of language impairments that can come with stroke. It's a great book - touching and educational. IIRC, the book mentions that strokes affect single native language, dual native languages, and post childhood acquired languages differently. And that if you want to be able to communicate after a stroke you best bet is to learn another language. Though it's been several years since I've read the book.

132 points by hunglee2 11y ago

blfr 11y ago

This switching offers practically constant brain training which may be a factor in helping stroke patients recover. Another hypothesis would be that being in better neural shape to being with allowed them to become bilingual. Can someone... obtain the full pdf? Do the authors try to control this factor?

khgvljhkb 11y ago
I'd wager most bilinguals are so not because they thought it would be a cool self-improvement project. I speak English because all the good movies are made in the US, and German because I live in Germany, and Swedish because that is what my mother and father spoke to me.
- drd93 11y ago
  I would support your statement as well. I know three languages: one as my native language, other as my country's only official language, and the last one (English) is my general purpose language, meaning I use at to surf web, to study books, to watch films/series, to code, etc.. Would I learn any other language if I would be born in English society and English family? Doubt it. Maybe some other mainstream language just for fun, but it wouldn't count as bilingual as I wouldn't push myself hard enough to learn it.
  - nathanasmith 11y ago
    As a native English speaker, born and raised in the US, it is a lament of mine that I can't justify the enormous time and effort needed to become bilingual. I guess I could learn Spanish, but why? It would be primarily recreational. And the time spent could almost certainly be more productively used picking up some other useful skill. Maybe I should just do it anyway in light of the more abstract benefits that the article touts.
    - pjonesdotca 11y ago
      A side effect of living on a continent separated by two oceans and having one single language. It's far easier and practical in Canada to be bi-lingual as English/French are the official languages. Having spent a portion of my childhood in Europe I saw first hand how much of a difference their default state of speaking 2 or 3 languages has on a society. Trust me, learning a second language is worth the time.
    - jfaucett 11y ago
      "I guess I could learn Spanish, but why?" Where are you from in the US? Im from the Atlanta area and bilingual spanish/english. Most people I know from georgia, florida, even alabama can at least understand spanish just from being around it so much. I really think to not know spanish you would have to actively try to avoid it - especially if you are young and from the city. In atlanta you can easily live without knowing any english, when friends came from south america we always found people fluent in spanish most native (at Starbucks, McDonalds, Grocery Store, shopping, etc).
      - nathanasmith 11y ago
        I'm in Florida now but I did live in Atlanta for a few years and, if pushed, yo puedo hablar espanol suficiente para un conversacion simple. La problema es que no tengo oportunidad para bastante practica para fluente. So, I'm kind of in this half and half limbo where I can understand and speak enough Spanish but not enough that any native Spanish speaker would actually want to have a conversation with me. And for the other person who brought up the buying and selling to Spanish speakers aspect, the vast vast majority of Spanish speakers I've ever came in contact with speak a hell of a lot better English than I speak Spanish so that doesn't really make sense in practice either.
        jarboot 11y ago
        >the vast vast majority of Spanish speakers I've ever came in contact with speak a hell of a lot better English than I speak Spanish so that doesn't really make sense in practice either. Don't forget that part of the reason that English is well known across the globe is because the US is a media powerhouse. The web is practically english, US blockbusters are seen worldwide, and it's essentially the language of international business.
- blfr 11y ago
  There are however plenty of Germans who are not fluent in English despite having access to all the same cool American movies as you did.
  - kristiandupont 11y ago
    Movies in Germany are dubbed. (I imagine that GP is from Sweden and probably moved to Germany, given that's the language of his/her parents)
    - khgvljhkb 11y ago
      Ganz richtig, Ich bin Schwede. True, I'm Swedish. Ja, jag är svensk.
phreeza 11y ago
I think the PDF is open access? [0] Of course it is hard to control for 'neural shape', but they seem to control for both education and occupational status, which seem like pretty decent proxies to me. [0] http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/19/STROKEAHA.115.010418.full.pdf+html http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/19/STROK...
AnAfrican 11y ago
I bet most multilingual people didn't have to become mulitlingual.

barry-cotter 11y ago

Abstract of referenced journal article Background and Purpose—Bilingualism has been associated with slower cognitive aging and a later onset of dementia. In this study, we aimed to determine whether bilingualism also influences cognitive outcome after stroke. Methods—We examined 608 patients with ischemic stroke from a large stroke registry and studied the role of bilingualism in predicting poststroke cognitive impairment in the absence of dementia. Results—A larger proportion of bilinguals had normal cognition compared with monolinguals (40.5% versus 19.6%; P<0.0001), whereas the reverse was noted in patients with cognitive impairment, including vascular dementia and vascular mild cognitive impairment (monolinguals 77.7% versus bilinguals 49.0%; P<0.0009). There were no differences in the frequency of aphasia (monolinguals 11.8% versus bilinguals 10.5%; P=0.354). Bilingualism was found to be an independent predictor of poststroke cognitive impairment. Conclusions—Our results suggest that bilingualism leads to a better cognitive outcome after stroke, possibly by enhancing cognitive reserve. (Stroke. 2016;47:00-00. DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.115.010418.) Key Words: aphasia ◼ dementia, vascular ◼ language ◼ risk factors ◼ stroke http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/19/STROKEAHA.115.010418.full.pdf+html http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2015/11/19/STROK... Original press release http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2015/stroke-191115 http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2015/stroke-191115

nonbel 11y ago
This is probably some kind of testing artifact. Table 1 shows that 64.3% of monolinguals were literate compared to 92.9% of bilinguals. Then in the supplemental methods we see that illiterates took a different test than literates. They defined cognitive impairment as a score of under mean - 2*SD measured from groups consisting of ~80% literates: >"The process of adaptation included culturally appropriate modifications of the original English version of ACE-R by examining each item for cultural relevance, translatability, comparable difficulty and adaptability with an aim of tapping the domain identical to the original version. Translations and back translations, and pilot testing were done based on standard procedures.3 ACE-R was adapted for the illiterate population by modifying literacy dependent items.4 Normative data and cut off values in the local languages- Telugu and Hindi were developed by administering the test to healthy controls. Telugu control group subjects consisted 907 literates and 199 illiterates, and Hindi control group subjects consisted 436 literates and 109 illiterates. Mean and SD for total scores and sub-scores in each domain were calculated across 4 age groups (20-39, 40-59, 60-79, 80 and above), and three education levels (>12 years, 4-12 years, 0-3 years), using standard formulae of Mean-2SD. Impairment in cognition was defined if the score on the ACE-R sub-domains was less than 2.00 SD below the mean level of age and education-matched norms." Then we have the arbitrary age groups and education levels which makes this look p-hacked, there needs to be some assessment of how much those arbitrary choices affect the conclusions.

wangii 11y ago

great, I know both HTML and CSS, and some javascript. seriously though, I think it would also apply to programmers using both functional and procedural languages.

wibr 11y ago
I think most programmers can learn a new programming language to reasonable "fluency" in a few weeks, for natural languages it's more like a few years. Totally different except when you think of formal terms like vocabulary, syntax etc. which can be found in both and may have led to the term "programming language".
- hollerith 11y ago
  The chairman of the department of English at my local community college told me that it takes the average student of English as a second language 7 years to get good enough that a native English speaker might want to have a conversation with the student.
  - adrianN 11y ago
    It depends on which languages you know. For native English speakers there is for example this ranking of language difficulty http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.go...
yAnonymous 11y ago
So you're quadrilingual? I got bad news for you...

grondilu 11y ago

Not quite related, but I'm wondering what it means to be bilingual. I mean, does the use of English on internet count? For instance, I'm French and I spend most of my time on the "english" internet, including YouTube, reddit, HN, IRC... I'd say 95% of my activity on the web is in English. I also watch american TV series and movies without subtitles. I understand english quite well and yet, I haven't spoken English for many years. Does that count?

saint_fiasco 11y ago
I'm imagining some poor anon or redditor getting a stroke and only being able to communicate through memes. I think if you can think in English, that counts as bilingual. Ever had a dream in English?
55555 11y ago
I can read fluently in Thai but writing is nearly impossible. I can understand (listen) with significant fluency but speaking is much harder. These are four very different skills, trust me.
arbitrage 11y ago
Fluency in another language is typically understood to mean all aspects of the language ... reading, writing, speaking, and listening. You're not fully (bi|tri|quad)lingual without being able to do some part of those skills in another language. That being said, you don't need to be the worlds best writer or speaker. You just need to have those skills.
- barkingcat 11y ago
  Certain languages are more difficult to master in the 4 quadrants that you refer to (read / write / speak / listen) - sometimes languages are much much more difficult to write than to read - it's important to keep those distinctions in mind when speaking about fluency in other languages because not all languages are like English / Roman / have an alphabet, and it's not fair to say someone is not "fluent" if they can't recall instantaneously how to write the thousands of characters that even a native-speaking child would be able to recall. I'd say someone is fluent if they can perform and understand communications via the various aspects of language, but I don't think you need to be able to express each one. (For example, being able to type Chinese on the computer via ping yin and fast computerized lookup is an expression of fluency, even though the person might not know how the stroke directions of the character would work if they had to write on paper unassisted)

AdmiralAsshat 11y ago

Strictly anecdotal, but I'll mention it anyway: My grandfather was bilingual, but his native tongue was Arabic. He held off dementia until his 90's, but when it finally set in, it hit hard. It got to the point where he often gave up trying to speak because he couldn't finish the sentence without forgetting a word he wanted and getting frustrated. Surprisingly, however, he often remembered the word in English and started speaking that instead. To use a computer analogy, it is as though the sector of his brain where the Arabic was stored had become corrupted, while the English sector was still readable.

theviajerock 11y ago
Very interesting anecdote.
RobertoG 11y ago
The same happens with my grandmother but the other way around. She doesn't speak her second language anymore, she has returned to the one of her childhood, but it seems like she understand it yet.

dahart 11y ago

It looks like there are multiple referenced sources of bilingualism contributing to "cognitive reserve". Pretty cool if there are direct tangible health benefits to learning! But twice as likely is a very big number in this context. It sounds like the population sample was all from Hyderabad, not a global sample. Is it possible environmental factors are present? Or perhaps socioeconomic factors -- I'd speculate that bilingual people are probably on average wealthier, leading to a wide range of possible benefits, including healthier diet, and better living conditions and location. I know it's armchair critique, but I just can't help but be a little skeptical of this headline.

Choronzon 11y ago

"even after taking into account other factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and age" But not IQ and social status,bilingual people are more likely to score higher on both and this could be an aspect of healthier cognitive functions rather than how many languages you know.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
madaxe_again 11y ago
Came here to say the same. Correlation is not indicative of causation. Bilingual people are more likely to be more upwardly mobile, and therefore likely have access to better care. Neurology probably has nothing to do with it.

djhn 11y ago

My gut reaction would be to control for wealth or income, which they do not. I am not very familiar with Indian demographics, but I would assume monolingual people represent the poorest of the population?

zxexz 11y ago
I've only been to India once, so obviously anything I say should be treated as purely anecdotal. In rural Karnataka, I did notice, that although literacy rates (writing/reading) weren't nearly as high among the poorest population, it seemed to be the norm that they knew Kannada along with at least one of Konkani, Tamil, Urdu and/or another local language. English was also very common, but not among the poorest.
usrusr 11y ago
My gut reaction: "metric used to measure stroke recovery favors bilinguals" The article mentions cognitive tasks that are likely to benefit on some level from "thinking in language". Duo clearly unrelated tasks like motor control also correlate? Is this really about brain activity keeping the system "fresh" and more capable of repair, or is it maybe just a simple matter of someone with "more words" pre-stroke having "more words" post-stroke? My wildly uneducated guess, illustrated with computer analogies: when the brain has to cope with multiple languages, "language thinking" overflows from dedicated to general purpose "hardware" and due to some evolutionary dice roll, the dedicated stuff tends to get taken out first in a stroke.

sunwooz 11y ago

A lot of people in India speak both English and Hindi, plus a host of other regional languages. "even after taking into account other factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and age" Did they take into account that people who speak multiple languages are potentially more financially secure and thus would have a healthier/more nutritional diet/lifestyle?

sremani 11y ago
In Hyderabad, people even with little education tend to converse in Telugu and Urdu/Hindi to a level a fluency. Ability to speak English is reflection of better social or economic status. You can still find a lot of people who speak two languages and who are not well off in HYD.
- sunwooz 11y ago
  It just seems like a contentious area to test this on. America would be better considering many people are monolingual.

VikingCoder 11y ago

Si. Es muy bueno.

swsieber 11y ago

If you want a lot more information about stroke and linguistics, I highly recommend the book "One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir" It's about an older married couple, both wordsmiths by trades (linguistics professors? I can't remember). The husband has a stroke leaving him with a single word vocabulary. It documents what they did in his recovery process as well as mentions the various types of language impairments that can come with stroke. It's a great book - touching and educational. IIRC, the book mentions that strokes affect single native language, dual native languages, and post childhood acquired languages differently. And that if you want to be able to communicate after a stroke you best bet is to learn another language. Though it's been several years since I've read the book.