Bilingual articles on the benefits of bilingualism

Last week the New York Times had an article on the benefits of bilingualism that was read and shared here and there, becoming one of their most read articles this month.

El Mundo has something similar as well today, called the map of the bilingual brain (el mapa del cerebro bilingüe).

Both are interesting, but the latter is twice as long as the first. Be sure to read the one written in your weaker language just in case it is true that linguistic proficiency does translate well into other areas as well. This is the major point to be proven or disproven in this subject: are multilinguals smarter because they are multilingual, or are they multilingual because they are smarter? Also, if they are good at other mental tasks as well is this because of being multilingual, or naturally gifted? Correlation and causation are tough to differentiate here.