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Poster C15, Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 10:45 am – 12:30 pm, Restaurant Hall

A prospective morphometric study on the protection of bilingualism against dementia

Lidon Marin2, Victor Costumero1,2, César Ávila2, Maria Antonia Parcet2;1Center for Brain and Cognition, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, 2Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging Group, Universitat Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana, Spain

INTRODUCTION: Evidence from previous studies suggests that bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve because bilinguals manifest the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease up to five years later than monolinguals. Other cross-sectional studies demonstrate that bilinguals show greater amounts of brain atrophy and hypometabolism than monolinguals, despite sharing the same diagnosis and suffering from the same symptoms. However, these studies may be biased by possible preexisting between-group differences. The aim of this study was to investigate the protective effect of bilingualism against dementia cross-sectionally and prospectively. METHODS: We compared global parenchymal measures of atrophy and cognitive tests using a sample of bilinguals and monolinguals in the same clinical stage and matched on sociodemographic variables. RESULTS: Our results suggest that the two groups did not differ on their cognitive status at baseline, but bilinguals had less parenchymal volume than monolinguals, especially in areas related to brain atrophy in dementia. In addition, a longitudinal prospective analysis revealed that monolinguals lost more parenchyma and had more cognitive decline than bilinguals in a mean follow-up period of 7 months. CONCLUSION: Together, our results suggest that bilingualism promotes both cognitive reserve and brain reserve. The combination of these two factors provides a neural framework to explain the nature and origin of the bilingual advantage in the delay of dementia. These results provide the first prospective evidence that bilingualism may act as a neuroprotective factor against dementia and could be considered a factor in cognitive reserve.

Themes: Disorders: Acquired, Multilingualism
Method: Other

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