GENDER FEATURES OF THE ACTIVATION OF BRAIN STRUCTURES WHEN PRONOUNCING EMOTIONAL AND NON-EMOTIONAL WORDS
With the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the gender features of the activation of brain structures when pronouncing emotional and non-emotional words were investigated. The studies involved volunteers - 20 men and 20 women aged 19 to 27 years, students of universities. During the preliminary examination, Annette's questionnaire was used to identify the leading hand. The study included several series of experiments. In the first episode ("Pronouncing an Unemotional Word"), the subject utters the word "Once" at the moments when the stopwatch hand on the monitor screen passes through divisions of 0, 5, 10, etc. seconds. He is then shown a video of a moving stopwatch hand ("Resting State"). In the second episode ("Pronouncing an Emotional Word"), the subject utters the word "Pain" at specified points in time (0, 5, 10, etc. seconds). After that, he is shown a video with the image of a moving stopwatch hand ("State of Rest"). The results of structural and functional MRI were obtained in the NBICS technologies of the Kurchatov Institute on the SIEMENS Magnetom Verio 3 Tesla tomograph. All fMRI data was preprocessed using the SPM8 package. Within each of the paradigms, pairwise comparisons were made based on Student's statistics and individual and group maps with a significance level p <0.001 were obtained. All obtained statistical maps were plotted on a template T-1 image and anatomical reference of "active" voxels to the CONN atlas was made. Significant differences in the activity of "speech" structures in men and women ("right-handed") when pronouncing emotional and unemotional words were found. These differences were manifested mainly in different levels of activation of the same "speech" structures in men and women. Moreover, most often, these structures are more strongly activated in men. It has been established that in the left hemisphere in men and women ("right-handed") when pronouncing words, the frontal pole, the precentral, postcentral, upper, middle and lower frontal gyrus, the middle temporal gyrus, the basal ganglia, which are involved in speech processes, are activated more strongly. In the right hemisphere in men and women, the paracingulate, supramarginal gyrus and angular gyrus, the temporal pole, the insular cortex and the hippocampus are more strongly activated, which are involved in visual-spatial attention and mnemic processes. It is shown that the pronunciation of emotional and unemotional words is accompanied by the deactivation of some brain structures. It is assumed that this is the result of the inhibitory influence of the dominant focus of excitation formed by the activated "speech" structures.