Olga Dragoy

Adyghe State University has opened a laboratory of experimental linguistics. Olga Dragoy, Chief Research Fellow at the Center for Language and Brain, will be the laboratory’s academic supervisor and consultant. The laboratory will study the psycho- and neuro-linguistic mechanisms of functioning of the national languages of Russia, both on-site and during scientific expeditions.

At the end of 2022, the results of the Project Competition in Basic Science Research for Intercampus Departments were announced. This was the inaugural competition, and focused on encouraging new research teams at HSE University and developing intercampus cooperation in the field of fundamental research. Here, HSE News Services looks at four winning projects.

HSE University has announced the winners of the Project Competition in Basic Science Research for Intercampus Departments. The competition, which the university is organising for the first time, will provide funding to 10 research teams working on five topics. Four of the winning projects will be implemented by new research departments formed as a result of the competition.

The Human Capital Interdisciplinary Research Centre (HCIRC) is a world-class research centre comprising a consortium of HSE University, RANEPA, MGIMO University, and the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). Its work was highly rated by the RAS in 2021. Lilia Ovcharova, HSE University Vice Rector and initiator of the centre’s creation, talked to the HSE News Service about integration in international studies on active ageing, creating a database on development trends in human potential, studying the effects of digitalisation, and the centre’s priority activities for the future.

The meeting was held in person for the first time in over two years. It was attended by Sergey Kravtsov, Russian Minister of Education, and Dmitry Smyslov, Vice President of VK. The Council discussed HSE University’s breakthrough projects in engineering and artificial intelligence and elected new distinguished and tenured professors.

A new paper of the Center for Language and Brain, in collaboration with the National Medical and Surgical Center Named After N. I. Pirogov, is now published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Researchers from the HSE University Centre for Language and Brain have created and standardized a new test battery for diagnosing language disorders in people with brain damage. The test is the first standardized assessment tool in Russia in the field. The paper entitled ‘The Russian Aphasia Test: The first comprehensive, quantitative, standardized, and computerized aphasia language battery in Russian’ has just beenpublished in the PLOS ONE journal.

In September-October 2021, a research group from the Center for Language and Brain (Olga Parshina, Olga Dragoy, Nina Zdorova and Anastasia Kromina) collected reading data in children in the capital of the Republic of Adygea, Maykop. 

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.

How can a small Russian research group become a world-famous scientific centre in less than a decade? A special edition of the Frontiers in Psychologyjournal devoted to increasing public awareness of neuroscience features an article about the HSE University Center for Language and Brain, including the successes and challenges of its early years.

Olga Dragoy, Chief Researcher and Director of the HSE Center for Language and Brain, spoke in a popular way about how linguists can help in clinical practice.

Congratulations to Olga Viktorovna on successfully defending her doctoral dissertation!

Congratulations to Svetlana on successfully defending her PhD dissertation!

Researchers from the HSE Center for Language and Brain presented reports at the Twelfth Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, a community of leading researchers in the study of the neurobiological basis of language.

In 2020, the International Conference on Cognitive Sciences was held for the first time within the framework of the 1st National Congress on Cognitive Research, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroinformatics. The members of the HSE Center for Language and Brain presented reports at this conference.

The Russian Science Foundation has announced the winners of four 2020 competitions. Some of the winners are from HSE University. They have received grants of 12 to 24 million roubles, for a term of two to four years.

The portal “My Planet” published a popular science article by the director of the HSE Center for Language and Brain Olga Dragoy.

Director of the HSE Center for Language and Brain Olga Dragoy visited the Rechts der Isar Clinic of the Technical University of Munich

Nine members of the Center for Language and Brain attended the annual Science of Aphasia conference that took place in Rome on 23-26 September 2019.

Director of the HSE Center for Language and Brain Olga Dragoy, and Andrey Zyryanov took part in the international conference European Low Grade Glioma Network, held in London.

Members of the Center for Language and Brain Olga Dragoy and Vardan Arutiunian participated at the 28th ANT Neuromeeting 2019 which was organised by ANT Neuro company.

Scientists from the Center for language and brain, HSE carried out a speech mapping during the awake-surgery

The Centre stems from the International Neurolinguistics Laboratory and brings together researchers in clinical linguistics, special needs education, psycholinguistics, bilingualism, child speech, and gerontolinguistics. The Centre’s academic supervisor is Roelien Bastiaanse, Professor from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), a researcher into clinical linguistics and founder of EMCL and IDEALAB, unique international educational programmes.

Family day at the Higher school of Economics in 2018 was held in the great hall of Russian Academy of Sciences, which at the time turned into a Higher school of experiments.

Svetlana Dorofeeva, a member of the HSE Center for language and brain, spoke at the 19th annual April HSE international conference in the section "The Russian language in the multilingual world".

New article about Center for Language and Brain was published recently on the website of our University: "Neurolinguistics Laboratory Wins 3-Year Grant to Study Prevention, Diagnostics and Therapy of Language Disorders".

The lab member of Center for Language and Brain Anastasiya Lopukhina at Linguistic Evidence 2018 in Germany

The HSE Center for Language and Brain studies a broad range of topics related to the connection between the brain and language. For Svetlana Malyutina, Deputy Head, and Mariya Khudyakova, Junior Research Fellow, particularly interesting areas of focus include the breakdown of language processing after brain damage (e.g., stroke, neurosurgery, epilepsy) and language acquisition in children.

The lab member of Center for Language and Brain Yulia Akinina, with her co-author the head of the lab Olga Dragoy presented their study on the traditional European Workshop on Cognitive Neuropsychology in Bressanone

At an exhibition held during the Russian Popular Front (ONF) Action Forum in Moscow, December 18-19, HSE neuro-linguists presented a method to preserve human speech after brain surgeries, and urbanists showcased sources of energy made of ceramics and moss.

Olga Dragoy, the head of the Center for Language and Brain (neurolinguistics Laboratory), HSE was awarded the prize "Golden HSE" for achievements in research

A numerous delegation of Lab members led by the head of the Lab attended the annual Science of Aphasia Conference 2017 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Funding through the European programme Erasmus+ will be allocated to the development of a Master’s programme in clinical linguistics, the organization of a summer school on institutional analysis, and the creation of Russia's first courses on education law. 

What happens in a person’s head when they hear speech or say something themselves? How does trauma and disease impact a person’s speech capabilities, and can we really help people who have certain medical conditions? Questions like these concern the life of language in the human brain, and this is exactly what researchers in the HSE Neurolinguistics Laboratory are currently studying.