UDC

612.85.016.6-057.875+612.822.3(045)

Authors

Cherkasova Anna Sergeevna, Institute of Natural Sciences and Technologies, Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov (Arkhangelsk, Russia)

Abstract

Studying neurophysiological mechanisms of verbal activity is important to solve theoretical and practical tasks related to learning efficiency. Modern approach to verbal activity analysis requires a thorough investigation of the interaction between certain brain structures and their role in the formation of the single functional system responsible for this function. Researchers turn to the functional brain organization when decoding parts of speech, grammatical structures and whole texts both in one’s native and non-native languages. Such an interest for interference and cooperation of languages in the brain is explained by the intensive cross-cultural communication and socioeconomic integration between different countries. Language processing has a wide spectrum of electrophysiological correlates reflecting various aspects of functioning of main neurophysiological mechanisms. Modern methods (MRI, EEG, evoked potentials) allow one to noninvasively obtain information about brain activity when performing verbal tasks. To date, it has been found that brain structures have different activity patterns while processing texts, various categories of words, and pseudowords. First language affects brain activation when the person is reading words in the second language. The time of recognizing and naming words has been determined: the first stage includes coding of semantic information, then syntactic and, lastly, phonetic one. It has been shown that there is an overlap of neuronal systems which provide functioning of languages even with absolutely different orthographies.

Keywords

MRI, EEG, evoked potentials, verbal activity of the brain.

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