Brain in Space: What Happens to the Human Nervous System in Weightlessness
While Roscosmos is discussing future manned flights to Mars, NASA plans to open the International Space Station for commercial tourism, and SpaceX is testing its Starship Mars prototype, scientists are seriously concerned about the impact of prolonged stay in space on the human body. While the effects of weightlessness on bones, muscles and the vestibular system are well known, how the human brain copes with microgravity has yet to be fully examined. IQ.HSE has compiled the latest research on this topic.
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Russian Researchers Propose New Approach to Studying Facial Emotion Recognition
Researchers of the HSE University and the Southern Federal University (SFedU) have tested a new method for studying the perception of facial emotional expressions. They suggest that asking subjects to recognise emotional expressions from dynamic video clips rather than static photographs can improve the accuracy of findings, eg in psychiatric and neurological studies. The paper is published in Applied Sciences.
Even a Nonexistent Medical Label Significantly Affects the Assessment of Human Behavior
Researchers from the HSE Laboratory for the Neurobiological Foundations of Cognitive Development, Alexey Kotov, Ivan Aslanov and Yulia Sudorgina, have experimentally proved that categorical labels, including nonexistent medical terms, significantly affect people's judgments, activating semantic knowledge in memory. The study has been published in the Frontiers in Psychology journal.
Russian Scientists Create Biomimetic Algorithm to Find Epileptogenic Areas of the Brain
Researchers from the HSE University Centre for Bioelectric Interfaces have designed a new method for detecting diagnostic markers of epilepsy, called interictal spikes, using EEG and MEG. Capable of accounting for various errors and artefacts, this method constitutes a valuable addition to the arsenal of means for automatic analysis of electrophysiological recordings in epilepsy patients, especially when the data are noisy. Precise localisation of epileptogenic cortical structures can enhance the effectiveness of neurosurgical interventions. The study was published in the Journal of Neural Engineering.
Unconscious Perception of Sounds: We Hear Differences Even without Listening
Neurobiologists from HSE University and the RAS Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology proved that the human brain unconsciously distinguishes between even very similar sound signals during passive listening. The study was published in Neuropsychologia.
Why Understanding of Texts Worsens with Age
Psycholinguists from the Centre for Language and Brain, HSE University, have found that to predict semantic relations between words when reading, older adults use their knowledge of the world instead of grammar more often than young adults. Reliance on the meaning of individual words instead of accurate grammar analysis allows for faster information processing, but sometimes causes misinterpretations. The study has been published by the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Towards Finding Practical Solutions to Socially Significant Healthcare Problems
The Centre for Language and Brain in Nizhny Novgorod started operations in September 2020. Today, it is comprised of a team of linguists - teachers and students - who are researching the relations between speech and parts of the brain. The Director of the Centre, Natalya E. Gronskaya, spoke to the HSE Look about how the neuro-linguistic laboratory appeared in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as current tasks and prospects the Centre can offer the students and the region.
Can the Brain Resist the Group Opinion?
Scientists at HSE University have learned that disagreeing with the opinion of other people leaves a ‘trace’ in brain activity, which allows the brain to later adjust its opinion in favour of the majority-held point of view. The article was published in Scientific Reports.
Movement Recovery after Stroke Depends on the Integrity of Connections between the Cerebral Cortex and the Spinal Cord
A team of scientists, with the first author from the HSE University, were investigating which factors are the most important for the upper limb motor recovery after a stroke. The study is published in Stroke, the world's leading journal for cerebrovascular pathology.
Scholars Investigate How Mirror Activity Works
A team of researchers from Germany and Russia have demonstrated that long contraction of muscles in one hand increases involuntary reaction of the other one. Meanwhile, the time between muscle contractions in both hands decreases. The results of the study have been published in the paper ‘Inverse relationshipbetween amplitude and latency of physiological mirror activity during repetitive isometric contractions’ in Neuroscience.
Healthy Aging Entails Reorganization of Function in Prefrontal Brain Areas
Researchers from HSE University and York University have become the first to analyse the results of 82 functional neuroimaging studies on working memory mechanisms in different adult age groups. The meta-analyses showed that across studies the agreement of various areas of the prefrontal cortex decreases with ageing, suggesting reorganization of brain function during healthy aging. The results have been published in the paper ‘Meta-analyses of the n-back working memory task: fMRI evidence of age-related changes in prefrontal cortex involvement across the adult lifespan’.