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Language skills keep you sharp

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-15 16:59

People with more developed language skills as young adults may be better able to stay sharp well into old age, even if they develop Alzheimer-like abnormalities in their brains, new research in the journal Neurology shows.

The findings, which come from autopsies of 38 nuns' brains, also suggest that this may be in part because their remaining brain cells become extra large to compensate, study co-author Dr Juan C. Troncoso of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and his colleagues say.