Evgeny Blagoveshchensky

HSE News Service spoke to Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neurosciences, Head of the Centre for Cognition and Decision Making at HSE University, Anna Shestakova about the achievements and goals of the new HSE University’s strategic project ‘Human Brain Resilience: Neurocognitive Technologies for Adaptation, Learning, Development, and Rehabilitation in a Changing Environment’.

HSE academics joined researchers from the Turner Scientific Research Institute for Children's Orthopaedics to study how the brains of children with arthrogryposis control elbow flexion after muscle transplantation. They found that in such patients, more motor neuron activity occurs, which means that the start of a new movement requires more effort from the brain. The paper ‘Feasibility and Challenges of Performing Magnetoencephalography Experiments in Children with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita’ was published in Frontiers in Pediatrics.

Can the brain be linked directly to the computer? What areas of the brain are involved in speech recognition? What impacts on decision-making and how to other people influence this process? Can you calculate people's inclination to take risks? Participants in the 'Cognitive Control, Communication and Perception: Psychological and Neurobiological Aspects' conference, which took place September 29-30, 2015 at the Center for Neuro-economics and Cognitive Research at HSE.