NSU has joined the project on 鈥淪tudying biomarkers and EEG correlators of human social behavior鈥�. Its frameworks require that NSU and State Research Institute of Physiology & Basic Medicine should launch a joint Laboratory for biomarkers of human social behavior on the basis of the Humanities Department at NSU.
The project has been run for more than two years, but until recently it only included collaborators fr om the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of SB RAS, The Scientific Research Institute of the International Tomographic Center of SB RAS and the Tuvan State University. The research was extended to other Russian universities, namely North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk and The Shukshin Altai State Academy of Education, as well as Khovd State University (Mongolia) and Institute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica (Taiwan).
鈥淪uch distant regions were chosen for different reasons,鈥� explains the head of the new Laboratory, Alexander Savostyanov. 鈥淭uva, for instance, is a socially unstable region with a high birth-rate but also a leader in the suicide rate among children and adolescents in the world. Moreover, Tuva has a high rate of so-called unmotivated delinquency. Yakutia was chosen as a region where the federal government implements the program on Arctic Exploration, which includes medical research in the Arctic region. There are also plans to develop the Northern Sea Route, mineral production and the Arctic military grouping. As a result, this region may soon face several million people moving there. Hence, it is necessary to evaluate risk factors, which may influence the health after the people moving to the North. It will be possible to foresee what might happen to a person if he or she moves to the Arctic Region, if he or she moves from city to village or vice versa, if a Russian moves to ethnical regions or vice versa, and so on.鈥�
The research aims at foreseeing and evaluating the risk of mental and psychosomatic illnesses for different groups of population. Of special interest is affective disorder or emotional disturbance, which includes anxiety, depression, some forms of autistic disturbance, alcohol or drug addiction.
First of all we probe biomaterial. Previously it was blood, but now we probe buccal cells and cells of skin on the cheek and hair, according to which we analyze the features of the genotype. International research data confirm the existence of gene combinations that can increase the risk of depression. When we tried to analyze how these genes influence the person鈥檚 behavior, it appeared that the influence depends on the environment to a great extent. Some effects were absolutely different for Tuvinians and Russians. For example, a certain genotype increases anxiety in the Russians but decreases it in the Tuvinians.
There are plans to conduct a complex multidisciplinary checkup and examination of various groups of people living on the territory of Siberia, Central and South-East Asia. It is going to include psychological, psycholinguistic, molecular-biological and psychophysiologic studies conducted mainly in Siberia, Novosibirsk and the Novosibirsk region, Tuva, Yakutia, Mongolia and Taiwan. NSU is actively entering the project. As effective work requires some help of professional linguists, first expeditions of Humanities students with their supervisors have already been organized to some parts of the Novosibirsk region.
The studies are based on scaled questionnaires and implicit tests when a person recognizes some words, sentences, photos or pictures and does some movement exercises with EEG taken, which reflects the processes in the brain.
Psycholinguists study among other things how people from different groups, with different behavior respond to language tasks. For instance, they analyze how people perceive sentences implying aggression, happiness, sorrow, anxiety, depression, etc.
Alexander Savostyanov says that they brought to light fundamental differences in perceiving aggressive words between villagers and city dwellers. People belonging to these groups reacted differently, which reflected their social behavior. People prone to certain mental affections also demonstrate different understanding of certain lexical constructions. 鈥淲hile investigating, we always take into account whether we are working in a city, wh ere all the people know Russian (in case of Russia) or English and Chinese (in case of Taiwan). However, if we are in a village in Tuva or Yakutia, people might not know Russian; in a Chinese village they might not know official Chinese as there numerous local dialects, and this is the case when professional linguists help. They work with people by translating or interpreting the psychological or linguistic tasks. We clearly see that integration of linguists and natural scientists is fruitful as linguists provide certain instruments for natural scientists to analyze the inner psychological state of a person. Further on, we analyze how it is connected with the brain work, genotype, etc.鈥�
At different stages the project receives funding from Russian Science Foundation grants and Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation; it is also expected to join the Russian federal program on Arctic research. After joining the project, NSU expects to receive funding of 2 mln roubles from the program 鈥�5-100鈥�.
