Mirror Labs: A Geographic Effect
The HSE Laboratory for Neurobiological Foundations of Cognitive Development (Neuropsy Lab) is one of 13 winners of the HSE Mirror Laboratories Competition and the only lab headed by an international faculty member. The Neuropsy Lab’s partner institution is the Scientific and Educational Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and Art Technologies based out of Ulyanovsk State University. The HSE Look spoke about this collaboration with the lab’s head – Dr Marie Arsalidou, Associate Professor at the HSE School of Psychology.
Dr Marie Arsalidou
What was the rationale to add a ‘mirror’ dimension to the lab’s profile?
It was a logical step in our gradual development. First, we received funding from the Russian Science Foundation in 2017. Then, we were granted the status of an Education Research Lab and obtained additional funding from the Russian Basic Research Foundation. Then, we awarded with ‘mirror lab’ status. This new commitment runs for three years, up until 2022.
The HSE Mirror Lab Project allows us to reach out to other cities throughout Russia. Moscow is the most densely populated part of Russia and has many schools. We have worked with hundreds of children in Moscow already. Then, we started to ask whether children's cognitive abilities develop the same way in major urban settings like Moscow as in smaller cities like Ulyanovsk. So, we do hope that we can provide opportunities for children from across the country to participate in this research. For instance, as some of our research in now online, parents from anywhere in Russia can register here.
HSE University’s Mirror Laboratories Project was launched in 2020 to promote research collaboration between the University and other Russian academic institutions. The geography of this project spans from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok and from Surgut to Krasnodar. Research activities are carried out by joint teams with a particular focus on involving young researchers and students. HSE University and partner institutions share equipment and data, research concepts and designs, as well as conduct joint workshops and training programmes.
Why Ulyanovsk State University?
My colleagues knew that the research team from Ulyanovsk were interested in working together, and I said ‘We're open to that, let's do it’. The first meeting with Dr Galina Pazekova, the head of the lab in Ulyanovsk, was held online. I sensed the benefits of this partnership from the first meeting, as we are both interested in cognitive development and have multi-disciplinary interests. The main thing is that we have common ground, whereby we want to assess children's abilities, as well as do this by applying different methods.
I have always wanted to reach out further, but not speaking Russian is not as easy. I speak several words in Russian, while Galina speaks basic English. However, we have been able to develop our communication and had a successful first year. Nevertheless, we face certain challenges: we toned to translate each other's work; our students get to translate during meetings and presentations. So, we can manage. I never doubted that this project would be possible, and technology makes things even easier.
What projects are you carrying out together?
We planned that our first studies would be in person, as we intended to do a longitudinal study where we would test children every several months across a three-year period. However, the Covid-19 pandemic forced us to move online.
The research we do is fun for kids because we present the experiments as games. They are generally concerned with mutual learning: we learn from the children and, we hope, they learn from us
A longitudinal study on the learning and neurocognitive abilities of school-age children is our main project with Ulyanovsk. In this regard, we are looking at mental attention, or how many things children can hold in their mind. When they enter school, theoretically, they should be able to hold three things in mind and, by the time they graduate, they should be able to process seven. We have lots of data confirming this from children in Toronto and Moscow. For example, one of the measures we use is an online game with balloons that change in terms of the number of their colours. We can consistently see that children in Canada and Moscow pass certain levels, and then they perform randomly at other levels. Can we see this particular process among children in Ulyanovsk? Can we see the progression as we expect, if we test the same children every few months?
The other project concerns categorical learning. It is also a fun experience for children, as we give them colourful stimuli – beautiful creatures with interesting shapes and faces – and they have to match them in terms of categories. These creatures belong to different categories based on their shapes or colors, and the children must identify which category they belong to. The ability to group features into categories is a fundamental stepping stone towards more sophisticated thinking.
The third project is about the process of hyper-focusing. Have you ever been in a gallery staring at a painting and forgot where you were? Have you read a book and immersed yourself in the text and did not hear anything around? Have you done home assignments and forgot to eat or drink? This is what’s called hyper-focusing.
When you are hyper-focusing you can apply a lot of energy to what you are doing at the moment, and shut down other things. We want to see how brain activity changes when you are switching in and out of this hyper-focusing process
We know that when you are studying you might need to hyper-focus, and some children might be able to hyper-focus more than others. We hope that our research might help clinicians who work with children experiencing attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders.
How do you delegate project tasks between Moscow and Ulyanovsk labs? How often do the team members communicate?
The hyper-focus project is being headed up by our colleagues in Ulyanovsk, and we assist from our side. The categorical learning and mental attention projects are run from our side, and they help.
There are 20 people on our team and 11 people on the Ulyanovsk team. We have regular mirror lab meetings every two weeks, where we discuss paperwork, reporting, and grant opportunities, and, as deemed necessary, meetings for specific projects. Sometimes, we visit Ulyanovsk, and this week, they are with us here in Moscow.
Any chance for an external audience to be engaged in the lab’s activities?
We are open about our science. Children, parents, and teachers are welcome to join in the lab activities. For example, in addition to the meetings we hold with our colleagues in Ulyanovsk, we hold seminars with a public school. Furthermore, some teenage students take part in short internships at the lab.
Science of Learning and Assessment is the name of a new multidisciplinary Master's programme, which starts this September at the HSE Institute of Education. This programme will train students to conduct research with individuals across their lifetime, utilizing methods drawn from such fields as neuroscience, psychometrics, biology, and computer science. The programme is offered in English and gives our students a competitive advantage with respect to carrying out research in Russia and abroad.
We are always happy to connect with the general community and offer learning opportunities to bright young minds.
Marie Arsalidou
Associate Professor, School of Psychology
See also:
‘Scientists Work to Make This World a Better Place’
Federico Gallo is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Cognition and Decision Making of the HSE Institute for Cognitive Research. In 2023, he won the Award for Special Achievements in Career and Public Life Among Foreign Alumni of HSE University. In this interview, Federico discusses how he entered science and why he chose to stay, and shares a secret to effective protection against cognitive decline in old age.
'Science Is Akin to Creativity, as It Requires Constantly Generating Ideas'
Olga Buivolova investigates post-stroke language impairments and aims to ensure that scientific breakthroughs reach those who need them. In this interview with the HSE Young Scientists project, she spoke about the unique Russian Aphasia Test and helping people with aphasia, and about her place of power in Skhodnensky district.
Neuroscientists from HSE University Learn to Predict Human Behaviour by Their Facial Expressions
Researchers at the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at HSE University are using automatic emotion recognition technologies to study charitable behaviour. In an experiment, scientists presented 45 participants with photographs of dogs in need and invited them to make donations to support these animals. Emotional reactions to the images were determined through facial activity using the FaceReader program. It turned out that the stronger the participants felt sadness and anger, the more money they were willing to donate to charity funds, regardless of their personal financial well-being. The study was published in the journal Heliyon.
Spelling Sensitivity in Russian Speakers Develops by Early Adolescence
Scientists at the RAS Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology and HSE University have uncovered how the foundations of literacy develop in the brain. To achieve this, they compared error recognition processes across three age groups: children aged 8 to 10, early adolescents aged 11 to 14, and adults. The experiment revealed that a child's sensitivity to spelling errors first emerges in primary school and continues to develop well into the teenage years, at least until age 14. Before that age, children are less adept at recognising misspelled words compared to older teenagers and adults. The study findings have beenpublished in Scientific Reports .
Meditation Can Cause Increased Tension in the Body
Researchers at the HSE Centre for Bioelectric Interfaces have studied how physiological parameters change in individuals who start practicing meditation. It turns out that when novices learn meditation, they do not experience relaxation but tend towards increased physical tension instead. This may be the reason why many beginners give up on practicing meditation. The study findings have been published in Scientific Reports.
Processing Temporal Information Requires Brain Activation
HSE scientists used magnetoencephalography and magnetic resonance imaging to study how people store and process temporal and spatial information in their working memory. The experiment has demonstrated that dealing with temporal information is more challenging for the brain than handling spatial information. The brain expends more resources when processing temporal data and needs to employ additional coding using 'spatial' cues. The paper has been published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Neuroscientists Inflict 'Damage' on Computational Model of Human Brain
An international team of researchers, including neuroscientists at HSE University, has developed a computational model for simulating semantic dementia, a severe neurodegenerative condition that progressively deprives patients of their ability to comprehend the meaning of words. The neural network model represents processes occurring in the brain regions critical for language function. The results indicate that initially, the patient's brain forgets the meanings of object-related words, followed by action-related words. Additionally, the degradation of white matter tends to produce more severe language impairments than the decay of grey matter. The study findings have been published in Scientific Reports.
New Method Enables Dyslexia Detection within Minutes
HSE scientists have developed a novel method for detecting dyslexia in primary school students. It relies on a combination of machine learning algorithms, technology for recording eye movements during reading, and demographic data. The new method enables more accurate and faster detection of reading disorders, even at early stages, compared to traditional diagnostic assessments. The results have been published in PLOS ONE.
HSE University and Adyghe State University Launch Digital Ethnolook International Contest
The HSE Centre for Language and Brain and the Laboratory of Experimental Linguistics at Adyghe State University (ASU) have launched the first Digital Ethnolook International Contest in the Brain Art / ScienceArt / EtnoArt format. Submissions are accepted until May 25, 2024.
Parietal Cortex Influences Risk-Taking Behaviour
Making decisions in situations involving risk and uncertainty is an inherent aspect of our daily lives. Should I obtain luggage insurance for my flight, cross the road when the light is red, or leave my current job for a new opportunity? Researchers at the HSE Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience conducted an experiment to clarify the role the parietal cortex plays in decision-making in the context of risk. They found that suppression of activity in the parietal cortex resulted in subjects being less inclined to take risks. A paper with the study findings has been published in Cerebral Cortex.