Alexander N Savostyanov

• Ph.D., Sc.Dr.
• Researcher at Russian Academy of Medical Sciences

Anxiety is a normotypic human condition, and like any other emotion has an adaptive value. But excessively high or low anxiety has negative consequences for adaptation, which primarily determines the importance of studying these two extreme conditions. At the same time, it is known that the perception of aversive stimuli associated with anxiety lea...

Neurocomputing technology is a field of interdisciplinary research and development widely applied in modern digital medicine. One of the problems of neuroimaging technology is the creation of methods for studying human brain activity in socially oriented conditions by using modern information approaches. The aim of this study is to develop a method...

A software information module of the experimental computer platform “EEG_Self-Construct” was developed and tested in the framework of this study. This module can be applied for identification of neurophysiological markers of self-referential processes based on the joint use of EEG and facial video recording to induce the brain’s functional states a...

Social interactions in the context of cooperation and competition are the most important type of activity of people, determining their well-being and success in life. The neural bases of this activity, as well as the role of personality-related individual differences, are insufficiently studied. In particular, the literature lacks data on the relat...

Multivariate pattern analysis has revolutionized the field of neuroimaging. Many hope it will help elucidate how mental states are encoded in brain activity, though others caution that such optimism may be premature. In this study, we sought to identify an fMRI-based signature of a relatively simple but basic feeling of recognizing one’s own face (...

Recognizing one’s own face is important for self-identification and is considered an indicator of self-consciousness. Social anxiety is related to special attention to self. The aim was to investigate the oscillatory dynamics associated with self-recognition/non-self-recognition in morphed faces and the correlation with social anxiety in these proc...

p>90 volunteers (62 women), aged from 18 to 38 years participated in an experimental task of own face recognition in morphed images. The aim of the study was to examine the test-retest reliability of self-face recognition test scores, the concurrent validity of test scores with self-focused attention, depression, anxiety, negative expressivity and...

The aim was to investigate the peculiarities and localization of the current source density of α- and θ-frequency bands accompanying competition and cooperation with another player, as well as individual figure building in a computer game. The sample included forty-two volunteers (24 females) between the ages of 18 and 47. Analysis of differences i...

This study aimed to investigate the perception of loudness in response to changes in fundamental frequency (F0) in spoken sounds, as well as the influence of linguistic background on this perceptual process. The results revealed that participants perceived changes in F0 to have accompanying changes in loudness, with a trend of lower F0 sounds being...

In this study, using the self/other adjective judgment task, we aimed to explore how people perceive themselves in comparison to various other people, including friends, strangers, and those they dislike. Next, using representational similarity analysis, we sought to elucidate how these perceptual similarities and differences are represented in bra...

The development of objective methods for assessing stress levels is an important task of applied neuroscience. Analysis of EEG recorded as part of a behavioral self-control program can serve as the basis for the development of test methods that allow classifying people by stress level. It is well known that participation in meditation practices lea...

The study involved 45 students (all men) of different nationalities (mostly Tajiks and Kyrgyzs) aged from 17 to 28 years who had moved to the conditions of the North (Yakutsk, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)). The aim of the study was to investigate the balance of connectivity of resting state networks in the first condition, when the participants got...

Intraindividual response time variability (RTV) is considered as a general marker of neurological health. In adults, the central executive and salience networks (task-positive networks, TPN) and the default mode network (DMN) are critical for RTV. Given that RTV decreases with growing up, and that boys are likely somewhat behind girls with respect...

The study of brain activity in the processing of self-referential information, as compared to the processing of information related to other people, is based on the application of mass-univariate analysis, based on the assumption that activity in one region is independent of activity in other regions. Recently, there has been a growing interest in...

The article presents the results of a study aimed at finding covariates to account for the activity of implicit cognitive processes in conditions of functional rest of the subjects and during them being presented their own or someone else’s face in a joint analysis of EEG experiment data. The proposed approach is based on the analysis of the dynami...

These days, the ability to predict the result of the development of the system is the guarantee of the successful functioning of the system. Improving the quality and volume of information, complicating its presentation, the need to detect hidden connections makes it ineffective, and most often impossible, to use classical statistical forecasting m...

The aim was to study the oscillatory dynamics accompanying the processes of interaction with the virtual character and the localization of the revealed effects. 42 subjects (of which 25 are women) aged 18 to 41 years took part in the study. During the EEG recording, the subjects had to interact with the virtual character by choosing one of three op...

It is assumed that cognitive processes are provided by the regulatory interactions of different brain networks. The three most stable resting state networks, among which the default mode network (DMN), the central executive network (CEN) and the salience network (SN) are considered to be the key neurocognitive networks for understanding higher cogn...

Polymorphism of the 5-HTTLPR serotonin transporter gene is one of the best studied markers of the serotoninergic system. Scientific interest in investigating 5-HTTLPR polymorphism arises because many studies have demonstrated an association between the short allele (S) and the development of a number of mental disorders. Several studies have shown...

Behavioral and neurophysiological study of subject’s personality traits under recognition of sentences about self and others

Depression is a very dangerous psychophysiological disease. By now, many methods of depression diagnostics, based on brain activity (for example, evaluated by EEG), developed. There is the concept of default-mode network, clusters of neurons that are highly correlated by their activity when a subject is distracted or daydreaming. High DNM connectiv...

Mental Chronometry of Speech Comprehension and Data Science Approach to Intelligent Database in Cognitive Science

This article presents the results of an EEG-based study of peculiarities of brain oscillatory activity in the process of language learner task performance (based on the German language). The aim of the study was to reveal neuro-physiological indicators making it possible to claim a significant difference between the ways of information input when c...

This paper extends the frequency domain quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) methods pursuing higher sensitivity to detect Brain Developmental Disorders. Prior qEEG work lacked integration of cross-spectral information omitting important functional connectivity descriptors. Lack of geographical diversity precluded accounting for site-specific...

The aim was to study the effect of adaptive (cognitive reappraisal) and non-adaptive (expressive suppression and rumination) styles of emotion regulation on the balance of connectivity of resting state networks. 51 healthy volunteers (29 women) at the age from 18 to 51 years took part in EEG recordings at rest and filled in the Emotional Regulation...

This paper extends our frequency domain quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) methods pursuing higher sensitivity to detect Brain Developmental Disorders. Prior qEEG work lacked integration of cross-spectral information omitting important functional connectivity descriptors. Lack of geographical diversity precluded accounting for site-specific...

In this study, we collected and systemized diverse information related to depressive and anxiety disorders as the first step on the way to investigate the associations between molecular genetics, electrophysiological, behavioral, and psychological characteristics of people. Keeping that in mind, we developed an internet resource including a databas...

The aim of the present work was to study the relationships between the individual characteristics of emotional control and changes in brain bioelectrical activity during the implicit perception of emotional coloration of verbal information. The study, which included 43 volunteers (26 women) aged 18–34 years evaluated individual features of emotiona...

Growing evidence shows culture-related differences in brain activity during self- and other-referential tasks. However, the effect of individual endorsement of cultural values on connectivity of the default mode network (DMN), the primary network associated with self-referential processing, during self- and other-referential tasks is virtually unex...

In the current study, we aimed to investigate the associations between the natural variability in hyperactivity and inattention scores, as well as their combination with EEG oscillatory responses in the Stop-Signal task in a sample of healthy children. During performance, the Stop-Signal task EEGs were recorded in 94 Caucasian children (40 girls) f...

The allelic polymorphism of the serotonin transporter’s gene 5-HTTLPR is considered as one of the factors determining an individual genetic predisposition to the development of a wide range of affective disorders, including depression. Many studies have shown that the climatic and social conditions of people’s life can have a significant impact on...

Self-appraisal is a process that leads to the formation of self-esteem, which contributes to subjective well-being and mental health. Neuroimaging studies link self-esteem with the activity of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), anterior insula (AIns), and dorsolateral prefro...

For many decades in psychology and the history of science the phenomenon of incubation has been known but not fully understood; this is the preparation of a solution to a problem during a period of relative rest. The aim of the present work was to use EEG data to seek patterns of resting state network connectivity during incubation associated with...

The aim of the research was to study the effect of depression, anxiety, and rumination scores on the balance of activity of the default mode network and attention networks revealed in the resting state EEG records. Forty-five healthy volunteers (24 men aged from 18 to 25 years) participated in the resting state EEG recording. The participants fille...

Insight is described as the sudden solution of a problem and is contrasted with an analytical, step-by-step approach. Traditionally, insight is thought to be associated with activity of the right hemisphere, whereas analytical solutions are thought to be associated with activity of the left hemisphere. However, empirical evidence as to the localiza...

Neuroimaging studies have revealed a multitude of brain regions associated with self- and other-referential processing, but the question how the distinction between self, close other, and distant other is processed in the brain still remains unanswered. The default mode network (DMN) is the primary network associated with the processing of self, wh...

The aim was to investigate behavioral reactions and event-related potential (ERP) responses in healthy participants under conditions of personalized attribution of emotional appraisal vocabulary to one-self or to other people. One hundred and fifty emotionally neutral, positive and negative words describing people’s traits were used. Subjects were...

The aim of the present work was to study brain activity using fMRI data during assessment of the self and other people. Subjects were presented with adjectives describing positive, neutral, or negative characteristics and were asked to assess the extent to which these characteristics applied to the subject him- or herself, or to a friend, a strange...

The aim of the study was to investigate the characteristics of the oscillatory dynamics of brain activity during the perception of negative, positive, and neutral sentences in healthy individuals with differing severity of depressive symptoms at the preclinical stage. The study involved 34 healthy people (22 women). The severity of the symptoms of...

The main goal of this study was to examine the effect of long-term meditation practice on behavioral indicators and ERP peak characteristics during an error-recognition task, where participants were presented with emotionally negative (evoking anxiety or aggression) written sentences describing self-related or non-self-related emotional state and p...

The serotonin transporter plays an important role in serotonergic neuromodulation. It is known that polymorphisms in the serotonin transporter gene are linked to the dysregulation of emotions. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the impact of variation in the gene encoding serotonin transporter polymorphism on oscillatory dynamics during...

EEG cross-frequency amplitude-amplitude correlation (CF-AAC) has been considered as a potential marker of social anxiety and other affective disturbances. Functional significance of this phenomenon remains unclear, partly because the majority of studies used channel-level analysis, which precluded the spatial localization of observed effects. It is...

The paper presents outcomes and perspectives of the research on the development of will and self-regulation in childhood. The authors implement an interdisciplinary approach that combines psychological, pedagogical, physiological, and neurophysiological exploration of the problem. Will and self-regulation are considered not only as the phenomena of...

This study examined children’s performance on the Stroop-like animal size test and its relations to parent-reported temperamental effortful control, personality, and common emotional and behavioral problems in a Russian sample of 5-12-year-olds (N = 202). The animal size test demonstrated a Stroop-like effect for accuracy and response time (RT) in...

Background: The study of the biological basis of anxiety, depression, and intellectual disabilities in humans is one of the most actual problems of modern neurophysiology. Of particular interest is the study of complex interactions between molecular genetic factors, electrophysiological properties of the nervous system, and the behavioral characte...

It is generally assumed that different electroencephalogram (EEG) frequency bands are somehow related to different computational modes in the brain. Integration of these computational modes is reflected in the phenomenon of cross-frequency coupling (CFC). On slow temporal scales, CFC may reflect trait-like properties, which posits a question of its...

Abstract Reactive, as opposed to proactive, behavior during social interactions has been investigated in the study of aggression, but it is virtually unexplored in relation to other kinds of social behavior. Little is known about brain underpinning of these processes. In this study, we used a virtual interaction model to manipulate the emotional di...

A great number of studies verified different prosodic cues to relative-clause (RC) attachment in English as L1 and L2. The controversial one is the informative prosodic boundary between the main and the relative clause that reliably biased L1 English listeners to assume a high-attachment interpretation in global syntactic ambiguity resolution. The...

Despite the large number of existing methods of the diagnosis of the brain, brain remains the least studied part of the human body. Electroencephalography (EEG) is one of the most popular methods of studying of brain activity due to its relative cheapness, harmless, and mobility of equipment. While analyzing the EEG data of the brain, the problem o...

Accurate repeatability of experimental data is the basis of professional scientific research. In this study we analyzed three consecutive experiments: The subjects had to complete a questionnaire three times under similar conditions within a 2–3 week interval to ensure reproducibility of the original data from experiment to experiment, using the me...

In this study, we aimed to compare the oscillatory dynamics accompanying self-referential and non-self-referential stimulus-independent thoughts. Electroencephalograms were recorded in 30 healthy participants who were asked to press buttons classifying their spontaneous thoughts as self-referential or non-self-referential. EEG data were analyzed us...

Humans are social beings and the self is inevitably conceptualized in terms of social environment. The degree to which the self is perceived as fundamentally similar or fundamentally different from other people is modulated by cultural stereotypes, such as collectivism and individualism. These stereotypes are not hardwired in our brains and individ...

Motivation and Aim: 5-HTTLPR serotonin transporter gene polymorphism is associated with individual features in regulation of human emotional behavior. The expression of this gene was detected in the limbic structures of brain, such as amygdala. According to the most of report, SS genotype of this polymorphism is usually associated with lower level...

Recent research has found a relationship between heart rate variability (HRV) and cognitive control mechanisms underlying various experimental tasks. This study explored the interaction between gender and resting-state HRV in brain oscillatory activity during visual recognition of linguistic ambiguity while taking state and trait anxiety scores int...

The S allele of serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) has been found to increase the risk of depression and other mental health problems, but some evidence suggests that S-allele carriers outperform subjects carrying the long allele in an array of cognitive tasks. Evidence linking this polymorphism with individual variation in electrophysiological...

Background: The study of intrinsic connectivity networks, i.e., sets of brain regions that show a high degree of interconnectedness even in the absence of a task, showed that major depressive disorder (MDD) patients demonstrate an increased connectivity within the default mode network (DMN), which is active in a resting state and is implicated in...

Abstract. A great number of studies verified different prosodic cues to relative-clause (RC) attachment in English as L1 and L2 (Fodor, 1998, 2002, Maynell, 2000; Carlson et. al. 2001; Jun, 2003; Dussias, 2003, Dekydtspotter et.al. 2008; Hwang et. al. 2011; Zahn & Scheepers, 2015). The controversial one is informative prosodic boundary between main...

Humans are intrinsically social beings and it is natural that self-processing is associated with social cognition. The degree to which the self is perceived as a part of social environment is modulated by cultural stereotypes, such as collectivism and individualism. Here, we tested the hypothesis that individuals who endorse collectivist values wou...

The aim of the study is to compare behavioral and EEG reactions of primary school-aged children during the recognition of syntactic errors in emotionally (positively or negatively) colored sentences that appeal to the choice of the child differently. 20 children (mean age 9,0±0,3 years, 12 boys, 8 girls) were examined. We found out that the childre...

The association of personality with resting state networks has been investigated in the mature brain, but its development has not been investigated, particularly in longitudinal design. Besides, all existing evidence is obtained using functional magnetic resonance imaging and there are no data on electrophysiological underpinning of these associati...

A number of studies have shown that the presence of short (S) allele of the serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) is associated with a higher risk for depression following exposure to stressful life events. These findings are in line with neuroimaging studies showing that 5-HTTLPR polymorphism has an effect on the connectivity...

A number of studies have shown that the presence of short (S), as opposed to long (L), allele of the serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) is associated with a higher risk for depression following exposure to stressful life events. However, many other studies failed to confirm this association. One reason for this inconsistency...