What is the video all about? Choose two statements that refer to the main ideas of the video.

1. Monolingual people know one language well but might miss out on the brain benefits and cultural experiences that come with knowing multiple languages.

2. Being bilingual improves brain health and delays dementia.

3. Learning languages early strengthens the brain and helps in understanding different viewpoints.

4. Bilingual people tend to be better at thinking and problem-solving, adapt easily to different cultures, and have more job options.

In the , all our languages are active, all at the same time. The effort of suppressing a language when speaking another, along with the mental challenge that comes with regularly between languages, exercises our brains. It improves our concentration, problem-solving, memory, and in turn our . It's now widely accepted that there are huge benefits to being bilingual. A key breakthrough came back in 2007 in , when Ellen Bialystok and her team made a discovery that shook the scientific community - and has real-world implications. It was the first study which suggested that bilingual people - people who speak more than one language - develop dementia four to four-and-a-half years later than those who . It was a powerful confirmation of the idea of . Now, what is cognitive reserve? Cognitive reserve is the idea that people develop a reserve of thinking abilities, and this protects them against losses that can occur through . As well as delaying the onset of dementia, bilingual people have been shown to recover significantly better after a stroke. Learning anything new helps build cognitive reserve. But there's something special about language. Language is particularly . It affects ideas and concepts, perception, different sounds. The more complex a certain skill is, the more likely it is to have a positive effect on cognitive reserve. So when is the best time to learn a new language? Well, here's part of the answer. The brain is a complex set of . When you're learning a new language as a child, you're building new networks. But when you learn a language later in life, you have to modify the existing networks and make more connections. Because learning languages later in life can be more challenging, the benefits can also be greater.

But a 2023 study at Great Ormond Street suggests this is just part of the story. So we invited of children that were aged eight to 10. We had a group of children who were . A group of children who had early to Greek and English from birth - they were our early bilinguals. And finally, we had a group who had been exposed to English between the age of two and five, and they were our later bilinguals. So what we did that no-one had done before, is that we asked the children to lie in the while doing nothing - and just stare at . And during this, we their brain activity. What we found that was really exciting for us is that our early bilingual group had the strongest connectivity in the network at rest. And these group of regions are regions that when we're doing nothing and just -. A little bit like if you're going to the gym every day, your muscles might look bigger at rest. Similarly your brain might be better connected at rest, because you are learning a language early. And this is something no-one had found before. And there's more. One lesser-known behavioural effect of bilingualism in both is the ability to see the other people's , or to understand that it is possible to have different points of view. Recent studies have also found that people tend to react more emotionally in their first language, and more rationally, in a more , in their second. And the way it is usually explained is that the first language is the one which we use to speak with family, with friends - in . The second language is usually learned at school, at the university, at work.