Малютина Светлана Александровна

The Russian Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT): version comparison and normative data for children aged 5–18 years

2026 · ARTICLE · en

The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) is a widely used neuropsychological tool developed for assessing various aspects of verbal memory. We present a RAVLT version for Russian-speaking children, developed in digital form with two sets of materials. The current study aimed to investigate whether the two versions of the Russian RAVLT are equivalent in terms of psycholinguistic characteristics and whether participants perform comparably on them. Second, we computed the norms based on a large cohort of Russian-speaking children (n = 239) aged 5–18 years using a multivariate regression-based approach. Results demonstrated that the two test versions can be used interchangeably for memory assessment in children. Moreover, we determined the cutoff scores for performance on the nine raw trial scores and five composite scores (total learning, learning rate, retroactive interference, retention, and retrieval efficiency scores). Only age, but not sex or test version, modulated test performance. The new Russian RAVLT for children can be used by clinicians and researchers to detect memory impairments in the Russian-speaking pediatric population.

Phonetic clustering characteristics in verbal fluency: A potential marker for differentiating subjective cognitive decline from mild cognitive impairment

2026 · ARTICLE · en

Objective Semantic and phonemic verbal fluency (VF) tasks are widely used to assess older adults’ cognition in clinical practice. Typical scoring only analyses the total number of correct words produced. We investigated whether differentiation between individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) versus mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which is often challenging, could be enhanced by also assessing linguistic (clustering) characteristics of VF responses. Method In this cross-sectional study, we retrospectively analyzed 426 VF responses from 127 community-dwelling older adults with SCD or MCI who underwent cognitive assessment in a memory clinic setting. Using mixed-effect models, we tested whether including linguistic (clustering) characteristics in addition to the total number of correct words enhanced the prediction of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) score and clinical group (SCD or MCI), when adjusted for age, sex, education level, and repeated measures alongside with task type. Results A lower mean phonetic cluster size in both SVF and PVF was associated with a lower MoCA score. Adding clustering characteristics to the model of SVF (although not PVF) significantly improved classification into SCD versus MCI, compared to the model with the number of correct words alone. Conclusions Retrieving sequences of words based on their phonetic proximity while performing not only PVF but also SVF tasks pointed to more preserved cognitive functioning and appeared vulnerable to early cognitive changes. Linguistic analysis of VF performance can capture subtle cognitive reorganization missed by scoring of the total number of correct words only and may enhance early dementia-risk profiling.

Эмоциональность слов в предложении и степень опоры на «поверхностную» обработку при понимании предложений

2026 · CHAPTER · ru

В некоторых случаях репрезентации предложений, воспринимаемые людьми, оказываются неполными. Причиной этого может выступать опора на «поверхностную» обработку при понимании предложений. Степень опоры на данный вид обработки может быть связана в том числе с объемом фонологической рабочей памяти. Эмоциональность целевого стимула и дистракторов часто влияет на воспроизводимость и точность в задачах на рабочую память. Мы предположили, что в рамках используемой нами методики эмоциональность «целевого» стимула уменьшает степень опоры на «поверхностную» обработку, а эмоциональность «дистрактора», напротив, увеличивает степень опоры на «поверхностную» обработку. В исследовании приняли участие 73 носителя русского языка (47 женщин) в возрасте от 18 до 30 лет (M = 20,4; SD = 2,87). Мы не обнаружили значимых эффектов эмоциональности целевого слова, что противоречит результатам предшественников и прогнозам теории конкуренции, смещенной возбуждением. Однако мы получили значимую положительную взаимосвязь точности с эмоциональностью «дистрактора», а также продемонстрировали, что большая эмоциональность «дистрактора», вероятно, усиливает опору на «поверхностную» обработку при понимании предложений.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation modulates action naming over the left but not right inferior frontal gyrus

2022 · ARTICLE · en

fMRI language mapping studies report right-hemispheric contribution to language in healthy individuals. However, it remains unclear whether these right-hemispheric patterns of activity are critical for language, which is highly relevant for clinical preoperative language mapping. The available findings are controversial. In this study, we first measured individual patterns of language lateralization with an fMRI language localizer in healthy participants with different handedness (N = 31). Then, the same participants received rTMS over the individual coordinates of peak fMRI-based activation in the left and right inferior frontal gyri. During rTMS, participants performed a picture naming task. It included both objects and actions to test whether naming of nouns and verbs would be equally modulated by rTMS. Stimulation of the left inferior frontal gyrus resulted in accuracy facilitation of verb production regardless of individual language lateralization. No modulation of object naming was found at any stimulation site in terms of accuracy nor reaction time. This study causally confirmed the critical contribution of the left, but not the right hemisphere to verb production regardless of the language lateralization patterns observed with fMRI. Also, the results stress that action rather than object naming is the task of choice for mapping language in the frontal lobe. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Intensive language-action therapy combined with anodal tDCS leads to verb generation improvements in non-fluent post-stroke aphasia

2019 · CHAPTER · en

Modulating the interhemispheric balance in healthy participants with transcranial direct current stimulation: No significant effects on word or sentence processing

2018 · ARTICLE · en

Patient studies and brain stimulation evidence suggest that language processing can be enhanced by altering the interhemispheric balance: namely, preferentially enhancing left-hemisphere activity while suppressing right-hemisphere activity. To our knowledge, no study has yet compared the effects of such bilateral brain stimulation to both logically necessary control conditions (separate left- and right-hemisphere stimulation). This study did so in a between-group sham-controlled design, applying transcranial direct current stimulation over Broca’s area and/or its homologue in 72 healthy participants. The effects were measured not only in a single-word-level task but also in a sentence-level task, rarely tested previously. We did not find either any significant overall effects of stimulation or greater stimulation effects in the bilateral compared to control groups. This null result, obtained in a large sample, contributes to the debate on whether tDCS can modulate language processing in healthy individuals.

Combined CIAT-tDCS Therapy in Chronic Post-Stroke Aphasia Improves Neural Speech Processing: Neurophysiological and Behavioral Outcomes

2018 · CHAPTER · en

Intensive speech therapy was shown to lead to plastic changes reflected by lexical mismatch negativity (MMN) responses in aphasic patients (Mohr et al., 2016). Since many studies point to the role of the right hemisphere (RH) in aphasia recovery, noninvasive brain stimulation techniques (TMS, tDCS; Shah et al. 2013) usually target RH to facilitate this process. However, individual variance in stimulation-induced neural changes and resulting therapy outcomes are not understood. Here, 14 patients with chronic non-fluent mild-to-moderate aphasia caused by a left middle-cerebral artery stroke underwent Intensive Language-Action Therapy (ILAT, Pulvermüller, 2008) combined with anodal tDCS over the left IFG. To assess speech comprehension mechanisms, lexical MMN paradigm (120 deviant words vs. 487 standard pseudowords) was applied in MEG, before and after therapy for patients and once for a group of 10 controls. To improve the SNR of the responses, we applied a noise bootstrapping procedure with individual noise level computation. We found that the average power of the MMN response in the LH was significantly higher in the patients comparing to the healthy controls (p=0.01). Moreover, the variance of the MMN power increased significantly in the patient group after the treatment. This increase correlated with the behavioural improvements measured as a change of accuracy in a verb generation task (p=0.002). These changes were also associated with clinical improvements in speech comprehension measured by Russian Aphasia Test: scores in a sentence repetition subtest significantly increased after therapy (p = 0.035). No effects were found for the RH. Our results point to the compensatory role of the left hemisphere in the chronic stage of aphasia. They also highlight the role of individual variability in recovery of the language function, suggesting considerable individual differences in the recovery potential. The study continues to investigate these effects in larger samples.

Effects of tDCS over Broca's area coupled with linguistic training are not specific to language

2017 · ARTICLE · en