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In Russia, they studied the work of the brain with ambiguity

In Russia, they studied the work of the brain with ambiguity

Russian scientists have figured out exactly how the brain helps a person choose what meaning to attach to a polysemantic word. This was reported to Gazeta.Ru by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science on February 21.

Scientists of the Institute for Cognitive Research of St. Petersburg State University (SPbSU) and the Institute of the Human Brain. N.P. Bekhtereva conducted an experiment during which they found out that when choosing a meaning for a polysemantic word, the mechanism of memory suppression is triggered in the human brain. It displaces meanings that are unnecessary in a certain situation from consciousness, thereby helping us to make the right choice.

The experiment involved 48 people (28 women and 20 men). The subjects were asked to insert the missing letters in the phrases “adjective + noun”, for example, “s_hoe _ino”. For adjectives, there was only one correct answer (“dry”). In the case of a noun, it was necessary to choose one of several possible options (“wine” or “cinema”). The task included 96 phrases.

Tatyana Chernigovskaya, director of the Institute for Cognitive Studies at St Petersburg University, said that scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record participants’ brain activity during the task.

“The fMRI technique makes it possible to register brain activity precisely at the moment when the choice of the meaning of a polysemantic word occurs, which was impossible in the framework of purely psychological or psycholinguistic studies,” Chernigovskaya explained.

During the experiment, scientists recorded a decrease in the activity of the hippocampus (the part of the brain responsible for emotions and the transition of short-term memory to long-term memory). They noticed that at the moment when the hippocampus stopped interacting with other brain structures, the unselected values ​​temporarily disappeared from the subjects’ consciousness, which allowed them to choose an answer among the remaining options.

The professor noted that the data obtained during the study can be used in a large number of applied areas in which the issue of adequate information processing and decision making is important, including in a state of stress. According to her, the work will also help to understand how a person as a whole manages to navigate in the current reality.

Last December, Eat this, Not That! published an article on aging. In particular, it cites the words of the neurologist from the Irving Medical Center at Columbia University, Priya Palta, that too much TV watching can directly affect the decline in the cognitive abilities of the brain and the loss of basic thinking skills. This leads to a decrease in the volume of gray matter in the brain, which is responsible for a number of important neural processes, such as decision making.

Source: IZ

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