--- title: A Bilingual Brain Is a Smarter Brain description: Skip the sudoku, try learning French canonical: https://time.com/3581457/bilingual-brain-smart/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-12T19:50:53.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:22.572Z article:section: Health og:title: A Bilingual Brain Is a Smarter Brain og:description: Skip the sudoku, try learning French og:url: https://time.com/3581457/bilingual-brain-smart/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Bilingual Brain Is a Smarter Brain twitter:description: Skip the sudoku, try learning French twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Speaking More Than One Language Could Sharpen Your Brain > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Mark Zuckerberg’s Half Hour Q&A In Mandarin [Watch (HLS stream): Mark Zuckerberg’s Half Hour Q&A In Mandarin](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/KRPecAcf.m3u8) (1:33)  _Published 2014-10-27. Billionaire social media CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to students at a Beijing university in Mandarin. Admittedly, it's an impressive feat for those of us who haven't dabbled in the tonal language._ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Nov 12, 2014 7:50 PM UTC by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Nov 12, 2014 7:50 PM UTC Speaking more than one language does the brain some good. A recent study [found](http://comm.soc.northwestern.edu/bilingualism-psycholinguistics/files/bilingualbrains.pdf) that bilingual speakers may actually process information more efficiently than single-language speakers. Researchers from Northwestern University, in Illinois, and the University of Houston used brain imaging to look at bilingual people’s comprehension abilities. They found that people who speak more than one language are comparatively better at filtering out unnecessary words than monolinguals, whose brains showed that they had to work harder to complete the same mental tasks. The study, published in the journal _Brain and Language_, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at what’s called coactivation and inhibition in the brain. Coactivation is the ability to have both languages simultaneously active in the brain, while inhibition is that ability to select a correct language while hearing more than one at a time. The researchers studied 17 Spanish-English bilinguals and 18 monolinguals, and had them undergo tests that assessed their brains’ ability to eliminate irrelevant words. For example, in one task the participants heard the word _cloud_ and were then immediately shown four pictures. One of the photos was of a cloud, and another was a similar-sounding word like _clown_. The goal was to watch how quickly the brain could make connections to the correct word. Bilinguals were consistently better at the task. The results create a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. Is a bilingual person better at such tasks because of their expertise in both languages, or are people with greater comprehension capacity better equipped to master multiple languages? It could be a mixture of the two. The researchers of the new study believe that being bilingual is a constant brain exercise. So instead of tackling a puzzle, why not give a new language a shot, if not solely for the brain challenge. _Read next:_ [_The Secret to Learning a Foreign Language as an Adult_](http://time.com/3453841/the-secret-to-learning-a-foreign-language-as-an-adult/?xid=time%5Freadnext) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3581457/bilingual-brain-smart/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3581457/bilingual-brain-smart/"},"headline":"Speaking More Than One Language Could Sharpen Your Brain","datePublished":"2014-11-12T19:50:53.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:00:22.572Z","description":"Skip the sudoku, try learning French","url":"https://time.com/3581457/bilingual-brain-smart/","keywords":["Research","Languages","language"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alexandra Sifferlin","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/research/","name":"Research"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3581457/bilingual-brain-smart/","name":"Speaking More Than One Language Could Sharpen Your Brain"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Mark Zuckerberg’s Half Hour Q&A In Mandarin","description":"Billionaire social media CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to students at a Beijing university in Mandarin. 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