Nowadays, many people use several languages in their everyday life. As a result, a lot of patients with neurodegenerative dementia are bilingual. This raises complex questions regarding language impairment in this population and how best to assess and rehabilitate it. Cerebral representation of languages and language impairment in bilinguals has become an interesting topic of research.
In this study, we assessed 21 late-bilinguals patients with dementia and compared their results to 19, cognitively healthy, matched controls to study L1 preservation.
Our results suggest that L1 is not better preserved in patients with neurodegenerative dementia. Interestingly, we demonstrated a better preservation of comprehension in L2 in our global population, regardless of the dementia. This points to the role of immersion in language preservation.