The Role of Interhemisphere Interactions in Children Aged 5–6 Years and Adults in Supporting Verbal-Mnestic Activity Associated with the Formation and Analysis of Verbal Utterances

Ontogenetic Development of Neurophysiological Mechanisms Underlying Language Processing

“…An appropriate way to study patterns of cortical interactions is analysis of the spatiotemporal organization of brain activity oscillations. Currently, it is of no doubt that language processing relies on a widespread network of brain regions [1][2][3][4][5][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. Great importance is also attached to the role of cortical networks and functional connections between different parts of the brain, in both adults and children [21,22,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33].…”

“…The other line of our research addresses the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the maintenance of mental speech activity associated with the synthesis of speech units from elementary components (mental composing words from a set of phonemes and composing sentences from a set of words) in healthy adults [2] and children aged 5-6 years [4]. During the mental composition of words from an auditory presented set of phonemes (phonemic synthesis) or sentences from a set of words, the adults exhibited specific changes in the spatial structure of the statistical EEG relationships with a significant increase in the interhemispheric interactions.…”

“…Left side-mental synthesis of speech units: composition of words from the set of auditory presented phonemes and composition of sentences from a set of auditory presented words. Right side-detection of semantic and syntactic mistakes in auditory presented sentences; analysis of verbal material during phoneme recognition in auditory presented words [4].…”

“…In children aged 5-6 years, the composition of words from a set of auditory presented phonemes and of sentences from sets of words showed significant changes in the spatial structure of interregional EEG relationships [4] (Figure 2). Both tasks evoked significant increases in interhemispheric interactions between different cortical areas.…”

“…A study of the functional interaction between various parts of the cerebral cortex (so-called functional connectivity) is of fundamental importance for understanding the neural basis of cognition [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. A growing number of studies that have appeared in the last decade testify the renewed interest in functional interactions among different brain parts, in both the background state and under cognitive activity [13,15].…”