Impact of an 18‐month non‐native language intervention on episodic memory and the underlying neural mechanisms in cognitively unimpaired older adults
Anne‐Laure Turpin, Caitlin Ware, Brigitte Landeau, Florence Mézenge, Asrar Lehodey, Célia Soussi, Marion Delarue, Oriane Hébert, Vincent de la Sayette, Natalie L Marchant, Gaël Chételat, Julie Gonneaud, for the Medit‐Ageing Research Group · 2026
Read Impact of an 18‐month non‐native language intervention on episodic memory and the underlying neural mechanisms in cognitively unimpaired older adults by Anne‐Laure Turpin, Caitlin Ware, Brigitte Landeau, Florence Mézenge, Asrar Lehodey, Célia Soussi, Marion Delarue, Oriane Hébert, Vincent de la Sayette, Natalie L Marchant, Gaël Chételat, Julie Gonneaud, for the Medit‐Ageing Research Group (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13392915.txt.
Description
Anne-Laure Turpin and the Medit-Ageing Research Group tested whether eighteen months of learning a foreign language could protect memory in healthy older adults. Eighty-nine volunteers aged sixty-five and over from the Age-Well trial were split between language training and a no-intervention group. Memory was measured with word-list and story recall tests, and brain scans tracked size and blood flow in memory regions before and after.
On delayed word recall, the language group held steady while the comparison group slipped, a divergence that reached statistical significance. Within the language group, gains in that recall score tracked gains in blood flow through the hippocampus, the brain's memory hub. The authors read the pattern as language study helping preserve long-term memory in ageing, possibly by keeping hippocampal circulation strong.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Anne‐Laure Turpin, Caitlin Ware, Brigitte Landeau, Florence Mézenge, Asrar Lehodey, Célia Soussi, Marion Delarue, Oriane Hébert, Vincent de la Sayette, Natalie L Marchant, Gaël Chételat, Julie Gonneaud, for the Medit‐Ageing Research Group |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 49282 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |