Thread by @sciencebanshee

So this cool thing came out the other day, which only means one thing. IT'S TIME FOR SOME VERY IMPORTANT SCIENCE ON TWITTER.

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The tl;dr version of the article (which I recommend reading - it's very good and also concise) is that music and bilingualism can help combat the onset of dementia, with music seeming to edge out dementia in speed-of-completion in memory tasks.

Sooooooo....

Let's talk about the brain. Because I can't talk about science for more than 4 tweets without making some kind of food analogy, let's think of the brain as a kitchen.
The brain:

Behaviours you want to do are cakes/pies/stews/etc. They require a particular combination of ingredients (brain areas) to generate that dish (behaviour). Acquiring a new skill is like learning a new recipe, in some cases, bringing in new ingredients.
Also the brain:

Here's where stuff gets interesting. In dementia, we see patterns of neurodegeneration that can manifest as a lack of connections between brain areas (ingredients) leading to altered/reduced/incomplete behaviours (dishes).

Individuals with musical training and bilingualism still show these patterns of neurodegeneration, but there needs to be much more of it before behaviour is altered.

This brings us to COGNITIVE RESERVE.

Back In The Day* education was thought to be the biggest protective factor against dementia. And crossword puzzles. And a bunch of other things.

*<10 years ago. Neuroscience moves fast sometimes.

This is a great* example of bias in science - individuals in these studies had good access to care and were close to or in university/research hospitals to participate in these studies. As a result, many were upper/middle class.

*terrible...bias is terrible.

What wasn't clear, though, was how education factored in. What type of education? WHAT KIND OF CROSSWORDS?

Enter in work on lifelong bilinguals. In this awesome study, bilinguals and mono-linguals were compared. Bilinguals showed, on average, fewer years of education, but years in school were low across the board because of the war:
pnas.org/content/114/7/…

Bilingualism. Kicked. Education's. Ass.

It turns out being bi- or multilingual recruits extra brain areas that still react to stuff even when only one language is being present. Essentially, the brain has to monitor the input to make sure it's using the right language. For our kitchen analogy, the brain is like:

Similar stuff happens with music - as a musician, there's stuff you learn that the brain doesn't need all the time, but still has running in the background just in case music sneaks up on you.

These redundancies help us actually do the behaviour in a timely fashion, but they also contribute to COGNITIVE RESERVE. If the brain is a kitchen and brain areas are ingredients, cognitive reserve is the pantry full of preserves you have for the winter.
Cognitive reserve:

Similar to having a pantry full of pickles, beets, jams, and sundry other bottled things (moose meat, anyone?), neurodegeneration will eat away at these before getting into your fridge where you keep the perishables.

SO WHERE CAN I GET MUSIC LESSONS, you ask? This is the part where I make my "it's kind of complicated and there are many answers" face that my family has come to expect when they ask me basic questions about my research.

(it looks like this)

If you want to stock the shit out of your brain-pantry, yes. Do that. Take classes IRL or online. Never. Stop. Learning. If we do more work and find out eating under-ripe raspberries improves cognitive reserve, or something, you'll at least have new knowledge/skills.

However, we need to do more work on what factors contribute to cognitive reserve, and the social and demographic implications behind those factors.

In Canada, for example, Indigenous nations have an immensely rich variety of languages, but generations of really shitty government policies tried to enforce English or French. As a result, some communities only have a few fluent speakers left.

There are some incredible things being done with technology:
cbc.ca/radio/unreserv…
And extra-special shoutouts to @ogoki and to @TSanipass, @BSyliboy and @JarvisGoogoo for teaching me some Mi'kmaq #onhere

In immigrant communities, what barriers exist to learning new languages, and how can this be balanced with supporting first languages so that we get all of that sweet, sweet cognitive reserve goodness?

And don't even get me started on the price of musical instruments.

Me, looking at a set of great highland pipes I will never be able to afford:

This right here is an example of how science and society can interact. So....

First up, we science the shit out of this. Study as many people from as wide an array of backgrounds as we possibly can.

Second and most importantly, we science the shit out of it *TOGETHER*. This needs to be multi-disciplinary AF, so if you're a scientist, public health worker, practitioner, policy do-er, genius billionaire playboy/girl/person philanthropist, MAKE FRIENDS.
Me, to every field:

So what have we learned today? The brain is a kitchen, you are the Swedish chef, your behaviours are cakes, and your skills and knowledge are stored in the pantry.

Research on how these *things* are developed and interact requires a mirror dimension-level approach that factors in social/cognitive/demographic/magic factors:

If you're interested in the *science*, go here:
pnas.org/content/114/7/…
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
jneurosci.org/content/35/3/1…
nature.com/articles/ncomm…
pnas.org/content/111/19…

And if you're an eccentric billionaire who wants to know more about any of this...