"I'm not out of my mind, I study English!"

Once you read this, you will be even more delighted about being students of English language. Being bilingual does not only help you in matters of job opportunities or being able to travel around the world, but also contributes to your intellectual wellbeing, for the reason that knowing a second language delays the symptoms of mental disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Even by acquiring a few conceptions from another language you have started increasing the activity of your brain.

As the Canadian psychologist Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished professor from York University, Toronto declares, being able to speak two or more languages brings advantages to cognitive processes and the increase in performance of one of the most essential areas of the brain, which is the executive control system; this mechanism makes us able to focus in relevant elements and data and ignore the banal details, along with give attention to more than one thing at a time and move on freely from one to another.

Children who practise more than one language and use their L₂ frequently can determine the main concerns of their tasks and multiple assignments more easily than those who only speak their mother tongue. Afterwards, the superior performance of the executive system leads to a better cognitive operation at elderly ages; one hundred and ten out of two hundred and one patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s who were examined by scientists from the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, Canada were bilingual and those were the ones whose symptoms took even five years longer to emerge.

Taking this into account, do you feel that it is in fact an honour for us to be able to study a second—or third—language?

Her name was Mary... something...

Marijuana is a drug which derivates from a plant named cannabis sativa and, according to the United Nations, it is the most consumed drug among people around the world. It is used either for medicinal, religious or recreational reasons, and consuming it at an early age can bring dreadful consequences.

The consuming of marijuana as a usual activity can have an effect on your cognitive processes! According to the research conducted by the scientist Madelein H. Meier, adolescents who make use of this drug showed a significant decrease in their intellectual coefficient in contrast with any person who does not consume this drug; 1075 young people born in New Zealand between the years 1972 and 1973 were part of the group that was studied until their thirty-eighth birthday.

It is believed that the persistent use of marijuana can have effects on memory and attention, and the results of the research show that teenagers who were more likely to consume this drug constantly showed a more noteworthy decline in their intellectual coefficient than the people who started consuming marijuana at an elder age. To quit smoking or to reduce the doses of cannabis does not restore the neuropsychological system among the users of cannabis in adolescence and believe that to smoke this drug at such a young age could have consequences related to neurotoxins.

Marijuana is extremely controversial given that it has a list of benefits—for example, decreasing asthma and migraine; also helps against depression—as well as detriments such as memory loss and issues related to body coordination; its legalization has been a never-ending debate. Considering both advantages and disadvantages, which side would you take?