Tag "neuroscience"

A team of Russian researchers with the participation of a leading researcher at HSE University, Ekaterina Pechenkova, found that during group problem solving the components of the social brain are co-activated, but they do not increase their coupling during cooperation as would be suggested for a holistic network. The study was published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Many people are able to recognize the personality traits of the person they are talking to by their facial features. Experts in non-verbal communication can do this even with a photograph. But is it possible to teach artificial intelligence to do the same?

An international team of researchers carried out an experiment at HSE University demonstrating that knowledge of several languages can improve the performance of the human brain. In their study, they registered a correlation between participants’ cognitive control and their proficiency in a second language.

Researchers from HSE University, Skoltech and the University of Toronto analyzed data from 190 fMRI studies and found out that food, sex and money implicate similar brain regions whereas different types of reward favor the left and right hemispheres differently. The paper is to be published in Brain Imaging and Behavior. 

Oksana Zinchenko , Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, HSE University, has conducted meta-analysis of 17 articles to find out which areas of the brain are involved in decision-making for rendering social punishment. It would appear that in case of both victims of violations as well as witnesses, punishment decisions activate the brain regions responsible for focusing one’s attention, processing information, and responding effectively to social interaction. The findings of the study were published in Scientific Reports.

A ‘Mega-Grant’ Competition for ground-breaking research projects funded by the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education was held for the seventh time, and this year’s competition winners included two projects that will be based at HSE University campuses. One research group will study dynamic systems at HSE – Nizhny Novgorod, and a new social neurobiology laboratory will begin work at HSE University in Moscow.

On September 23-24, the CCCP19 Symposium ‘Cognition, Computation, Neuroeconomics and Performance’ will be held at HSE University. The goal of the symposium is to exhibit cutting edge research at the CCDM, a leading cognitive neuroscience research centre in Russia, and LNC2, a leading European research centre in neuroeconomics, cognitive neuroscience and neural theory. Ahead of CCCP19, the HSE News Service spoke with the conference organizer and several invited speakers about the plan for this symposium and the importance of their research in the field.

When bidding in a competitive market, our brains use a special type of heuristic to adjust the price depending on the success of previous attempts to buy goods. Moreover, this learning mechanism involves not only the cerebral cortex, but the evolutionary ancient brain area of the striatum. This was the conclusion reached by neuroscientists from the HSE Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Research Center of Neurology (Moscow, Russia) in a study that was published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

In a competition for science bloggers held at HSE University, Vladimir Mikheev and Vikotria Zemlyak were among the top performers. The students of the English-taught Master’s programme ‘Cognitive Sciences and Technologies: From Neuron to Cognition’ produce ‘Neirochai’ (‘NeuroTea’), a science podcast. The duo spoke with the HSE News Service about their guests, their listeners and their future plans.

The HSE Centre for Bioelectric Interfaces studies bilateral brain-computer communications and creates neuro interfaces for neuro rehabilitation and developing bionic prosthetics. This allows scientists to successfully rehabilitate patients who have suffered strokes, develop prosthetics with better sensitivity, and even provide ways to assess the competency of simultaneous interpreters.