{"id":3651,"date":"2013-11-07T18:57:22","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T13:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcurocks.wordpress.com\/?p=2213"},"modified":"2013-11-07T18:57:22","modified_gmt":"2013-11-07T13:27:22","slug":"goodkhabar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/07\/goodkhabar\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Khabar"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent newspaper report caught my eye, and given my fledgling attempts to learn\u00a0Telugu, it felt vaguely satisfying to read that Speaking a Second Language May Delay Dementia<\/strong>. But it was infinitely more satisfying to learn that the research that led to this finding was done (in part) at the UoH<\/strong>, in our very own CNCS<\/strong>, the Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"19.cover\"Professor Bapiraju<\/strong> (of the School of Computer and Information Sciences and Coordinator of CNCS) wrote in to tell me that the article in the journal Neurology<\/strong> (the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology) that went online yesterday was the \u00a0product of collaboration among CNCS, NIMS and Osmania University, as part of a Cognitive Science Initiative project funded by the Department of Science and Technology. The full list of authors of the paper, \u00a0Bilingualism delays age at onset of dementia, independent of education and immigration status<\/strong><\/em>, are Suvarna Alladi, \u00a0Thomas H. Bak, \u00a0Vasanta Duggirala, Bapiraju Surampudi, \u00a0Mekala Shailaja, \u00a0Anuj Kumar Shukla, Jaydip Ray Chaudhuri, and Subhash Kaul, Anuj Shukla being an M. Phil. student of the Centre, while the other authors are at NIMS, OU, and Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

\n\"bapi2\"<\/a>The main features of the study, as summarized in the abstract to the paper read as follows: Overall, bilingual patients developed dementia 4.5 years later than the monolingual ones. A significant difference in age at onset was found across Alzheimer disease dementia as well as frontotemporal dementia and vascular dementia, and was also observed in illiterate patients. There was no additional benefit to speaking more than 2 languages. The bilingual effect on age at dementia onset was shown independently of other potential confounding factors such as education, sex, occupation, and urban vs rural dwelling of subjects.<\/em>This is the largest study so far documenting a delayed onset of dementia in bilingual patients and the first one to show it separately in different dementia subtypes. It is the first study reporting a bilingual advantage in those who are illiterate, suggesting that education is not a sufficient explanation for the observed difference. The findings are interpreted in the context of the bilingual advantages in attention and executive functions.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Untitled\"<\/a>This work has captured the imagination of the entire world, it seems! A blog from Brazil says:\u00a0Mais um motivo para falar ingl\u00eas (ou espanhol, franc\u00eas, esperanto…)<\/a> namely\u00a0Another reason to speak English (or Spanish, French, Esperanto…)<\/em>.\u00a0Newspapers across the world have picked up the article, from the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS to the LA Times…\u00a0\u200bProfessor Huntington Potter, Director of the\u00a0Alzheimer’s Disease Programs at the\u00a0University of Colorado in Denver has been quoted as calling the study “very definitive” in an interview with\u00a0MedPage Today.\u00a0“The fact that this study was carried out in India where many people are illiterate … and still the benefit was seen, bolsters the idea that cognitive reserve can be acquired in the absence of formal schooling,” he said.<\/p>\n

Heartening news. And also very heartening that this work was done in part at our University. What better way to underscore our belief in the importance of multidisciplinary effort! \u00a0Je \u0938\u094b\u091a\u0924\u093e \u0939\u0942\u0901 \u0b8e\u0ba9\u0bcd\u0bb1\u0bc1 \u0ba8\u0bbe\u0ba9\u0bcd always \u0c05\u0c28\u0c41\u0c15\u0c41\u0c02\u0c1f\u0c41\u0c28\u0c4d\u0c28\u0c3e\u0c28\u0c41!<\/p>\n

The DOI link to the article for those interested is:<\/div>\n
doi:10.1212\/01.wnl.0000436620.33155.a4<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent newspaper report caught my eye, and given my fledgling attempts to learn\u00a0Telugu, it felt vaguely satisfying to read that Speaking a Second Language May Delay Dementia. But it was infinitely more satisfying to learn that the research that led to this finding was done (in part) at the UoH, in our very own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[105,111,115],"tags":[151,230,241,288],"class_list":["post-3651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics","category-cncs-2","category-faculty","tag-cncs","tag-multilingualism","tag-neurology","tag-uoh"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paG6mN-WT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}