Hippocampal adaptations in Mild Cognitive Impairment patients are modulated by bilingual language experiences

Autor: Toms Voits, Jason Rothman, Marco Calabria, Holly Robson, Naiara Aguirre, Gabriele Cattaneo, Víctor Costumero, Mireia Hernández, Montserrat Juncadella Puig, Lidón Marín-Marín, Anna Suades, Albert Costa, Christos Pliatsikas
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. :1-11
ISSN: 1469-1841
1366-7289
Popis: Bilingualism has been shown to contribute to increased resilience against cognitive aging. One of the key brain structures linked to memory and dementia symptom onset, the hippocampus, has been observed to adapt in response to bilingual experience – at least in healthy individuals. However, in the context of neurodegenerative pathology, it is yet unclear what role previous bilingual experience might have in terms of sustaining integrity of this structure or related behavioral correlates. The present study adds to the limited cohort of research on the effects of bilingualism on neurocognitive outcomes in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) using structural brain data. We investigate whether bilingual language experience (operationalized as language entropy) results in graded neurocognitive adaptations within a cohort of bilinguals diagnosed with MCI. Results reveal a non-linear effect of bilingual language entropy on hippocampal volume, although they do not predict episodic memory performance, nor age of MCI diagnosis.
Databáze: OpenAIRE