Kinesiology and interhemispheric interaction in speech therapy work with older preschool children

The author of the article offers a system of games and exercises used in speech therapy work with children of older preschool age, based on kinesiology and neuropsychology. These games and exercises allow preschoolers to develop communication skills, visual and motor memory, concentration and stability of attention, observation, hand coordination, and motor skills.

SOME RISK MARKERS IN PATIENTS WITH TRANSIENT VISUAL DISORDERS AND ARTERIAL HYPERTENSION

The objective of this study was to assess the significance of the parameters of visual evoked potentials (VERP), interhemispheric interaction and microcirculatory vessels impairment as probable risk markers of the transient visual disorders and its meaning in prognosis of cerebrovascular accidents at arterial hypertension (AH). The study involved 36 patients (mean age 59.7 years) with AH, who had transient ischemic attacks (TIA) with visual disorders. Clinical methods, neuroimaging techniques, ultrasound Doppler, assessment of the microvasculature, perimetry (Zeiss Humphrey 720 sphero-perimeter) were used. Visual evoked potentials (stimulated by flash of red light) included the assessment of ultra-early, early and long-latency response components. Interhemispheric and cognitive functions were investigated using praxis tests and the MMSE scale. It was established that AH preceded all episodes of TIA. Vessels of the fundus of eye had polymorphic signs of structural and functional changes in all patients. A function of an optic nerve, according to parameters of VERP, was found to be impaired after the TIA had ended and manifested by the asymmetry of the latent periods of healthy and compromised eyes. We also found polymorphic CNS disturbances, impairment of interhemispheric interaction and a cognitive score reduction. We can suggest that described patterns of the disturbances can be explained by chronic changes in certain cerebral blood pools that are consistent with the concept of increasing and accumulation of microfocal changes in the brain. Acute or chronic ischemia itself is a predictable or regular consequence of reduced compensatory capabilities of the cerebral circulation and worsening of the state of neuronal activity in acute ischemic event.

A History of Brain Asymmetry Studies

The history of the study of brain asymmetry and hemispheric specialization is reviewed, starting with Broca’s initial discovery of the left frontal basis for speech, continuing through Sperry’s work with “split-brain” patients, and ending with the componential approach that emerged in the 1980s in which the pursuit of an “ultimate dichotomy” underlying hemispheric specialization was finally abandoned and a new emphasis on hemispheric division of labor was introduced. Special emphasis is given to methodological considerations of the use of dichotic listening and tachistoscopic divided visual half-field paradigms. In addition, the topics of interhemispheric interaction and handedness are discussed, with a particular emphasis on the importance of conceptualizing handedness in terms of both direction (left versus right) and degree (strong/consistent versus mixed/inconsistent).

The research of the role of interhemispheric interaction in problem solving: some behavioral and physiological results

In this paper we describe the role of interhemispheric interaction in problem solving. We have some ex- perimental hypotheses as a result of analysis of various theoretical approaches of corpus callosum functions and role of interhemispheric interaction in creative problem solving. In our research we adhere to the theory of joint work of two hemispheres during creative problem solving and the complex theory of the corpus cal- losum function. In this study we used a method of parallel probe tasks (choice of two simple alternatives) that was performed at the same time with the main problem task (insight or routine). Interhemispheric interaction was complicated by contralateral probe tasks. It means, when subject solve insight or routine problem, probe task was presented in the left/right visual field and was performed by the left/right hand. We register brain activity (EEG) during the whole experiment. The results showed us the specificity of mechanism of insight solution compared to routine solution, and that the interhemispheric interaction plays a significant role in insight problem solving.

Relation of success in study of foreign language with speed of interhemispheric transfer of information

Bilingual speakers seem to outreach monolingual speakers in performing non-verbal tasks for testing executive functions, such as Simon, Flanker and Stroop tasks, as well as in capacity of working memory. Other researchers have doubts about these cognitive benefits of bilinguals and multilinguals. The study used a combined test with the tasks of the Stroop, Poffenberger, Sperry in native (Ukrainian) and foreign (English) languages. Schoolboys of lyceum were the subjects surveyed (14-15 years old). Stimuli (the word "Green" or "Red", "Blue" or "Yellow" written in relevant or irrelevant color) were exposed on the right or left from the center of the screen. In the case of congruence the word and its semantic meaning should press one button by the ipsilateral hand ("yes"), while in the case of mismatch – the other button by the contralateral one ("no"). Latent periods of response to stimuli, which reflect the speed of the interhemispheric transfer of information, were taken into account. Correlation analysis of the success in study in the nine subjects of the three blocks (humanities, natural and formal disciplines) reveal a direct correlation of speed of reaction when performing the complex Stroop test in both the native and English languages with the success in the learning English language, what may indicate on special dependence of the success from interhemispheric interaction. In order for the foreign language to be automated and become "all the more native", it is need the fast access of the executive structures of the brain, such as the front-parietal neural network, to the linguistic neural networks, presented in both hemispheres. According to literature, the inhibitory control mechanism from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as the key structure of the front-parietal brain system may be one of several mechanisms underlying bilingual superiority. The results obtained by us complement this conception, indicating the importance of the speed of interhemispheric interaction.

Personally Differentiated Approach in Dysgraphia Correction of Primary School Children With General Speech Underdevelopment

In the works of famous authors, we can find well-presented mechanisms of writing and the structure of work to eliminate deviances of reading and writing, related to the deficiency of certain operations of writing, or a deviance of the speech system functioning. According to the conception of A. R. Luria about the psychophysiological mechanisms of writing, the authors revealed the linguistic and optical spatial deviances in the structure of dysgraphia, lexical and grammatical, phonetic-phonemic disorders, skills-formation disorder of linguistic analysis and synthesis; they presented the areas and techniques of preventive and corrective work. The question of children’s condition with writing disorder of psychological level of its organization is not fully studied. The corrective work presented in the article is directed to the elimination of deviances in oral and written speech and aimed at the formation of interhemispheric interaction. The profile of functional asymmetry of hemispheres and the type of leading modality in children were taken into account. Methods of neurolinguistics programming in the correctional process were used as means of psychological correction, harmonization of personality, developing attention, memory, thinking and speech, increasing practicalliteracy in children. Keywords: writing process correction, neurolinguistics programming, neuropsychological approach, written speech motivation, sensory perception, regulation, self-control

Split brains

The largest fibre tract in the human brain connects the two cerebral hemispheres. A ‘split-brain’ surgery severs this structure, sometimes together with other white matter tracts connecting the right hemisphere and the left. Split-brain surgeries have long been performed on non-human animals for experimental purposes, but a number of these surgeries were also performed on adult human beings in the second half of the twentieth century, as a medical treatment for severe cases of epilepsy. A number of these people afterwards agreed to participate in ongoing research into the psychobehavioural consequences of the procedure. These experiments have helped to show that the corpus callosum is a significant source of interhemispheric interaction and information exchange in the ‘neurotypical’ brain. After split-brain surgery, the two hemispheres operate unusually independently of each other in the realm of perception, cognition, and the control of action. For instance, each hemisphere receives visual information directly from the opposite (‘contralateral’) side of space, the right hemisphere from the left visual field and the left hemisphere from the right visual field. This is true of the normal (‘neurotypical’) brain too, but in the neurotypical case interhemispheric tracts allow either hemisphere to gain access to the information that the other has received. In a split-brain subject however the information more or less stays put in whatever hemisphere initially received it. And it isn’t just visual information that is confined to one hemisphere or the other after the surgery. Rather, after split-brain surgery, each hemisphere is the source of proprietary perceptual information of various kinds, and is also the source of proprietary memories, intentions, and aptitudes. Various notions of psychological unity or integration have always been central to notions of mind, personhood, and the self. Although split-brain surgery does not prevent interhemispheric interaction or exchange, it naturally alters and impedes it. So does the split-brain subject as a whole nonetheless remain a unitary psychological being? Or could there now be two such psychological beings within one human animal – sharing one body, one face, one voice? Prominent neuropsychologists working with the subjects have often appeared to argue or assume that a split-brain subject has a divided or disunified consciousness and even two minds. Although a number of philosophers agree, the majority seem to have resisted these conscious and mental ‘duality claims’, defending alternative interpretations of the split-brain experimental results. The sources of resistance are diverse, including everything from a commitment to the necessary unity of consciousness, to recognition of those psychological processes that remain interhemispherically integrated, to concerns about what the moral and legal consequences would be of recognizing multiple psychological beings in one body. On the other hand underlying most of these arguments against the various ‘duality’ claims is the simple fact that the split-brain subject does not appear to be two persons, but one – and there are powerful conceptual, social, and moral connections between being a unitary person on the one hand and having a unified consciousness and mind on the other.

Objection from Sub-Cortical Structures

This chapter explains and responds to the major objection to the duality claims, the objection from sub-cortical structures. What gives rise to the duality intuition is that, after split-brain surgery, mental state interaction appears to operate oddly indirectly—when the mental states in question are in opposite hemispheres. Nonetheless, interhemispheric mental interaction is not entirely indirect, that is, not exclusively mediated by sensation/perception and re/action. According to the objection from sub-cortical structures, remaining direct interhemispheric interaction is substantial enough to support the 1-thinker claim over the 2-thinkers claim. I argue instead that remaining direct interhemispheric interaction is not so substantial, and that what remaining direct interhemispheric interaction there is remains consistent with the 2-thinkers claim that the rest of the data support. R and L are thus not discrete but still distinct thinkers.