Recent findings from the EU-funded BILINGUALPLAS project showed the association between bilingualism and cognitive reserve. Cognitive reserve refers to individual differences in how tasks are performed that may allow some people to be more resilient than others. In general, cognitive reserve may be developed by taking part in cognitively stimulating activities including physical exercise, social interaction, learning new skills such as musical instruments and languages. Researchers from the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (Spain) were interested in the last factor and measured the impact of bilingualism on cognitive reserve. Spanish people aged between 60 and 80 were recruited and underwent a neuropsychological assessment to estimate cognitive reserve levels and ensure that they were cognitively healthy. Then, they attended a second session to perform two tasks while an electroencephalographic recording was made. The aim of this measurement was to investigate what happens in the brain when task switching, since it mimics the switching that goes on in the brain of a bilingual person when they move from language to language. Results showed that people with high cognitive reserve performed the task more accurately than those with lower cognitive reserve. In addition, the deployment of brain activity was greater in people with high compared to low cognitive reserve.
