Researchers from HSE, Northumbria University, and Aarhus University have experimentally confirmed the hypothesis, whereby comprehension of a word’s meaning involves not only the ‘classic’ language brain centres but also the cortical regions responsible for the control of body muscles, such as hand movements. The resulting brain representations are, therefore, distributed across a network of locations involving both areas specialised for language processing and those responsible for the control of the associated action. The results have been published in the journal Neuropsychologia.

In 2017, we expect neurolinguisitcs to continue developing such applications as standardized tests for speech deficiencies. Furthermore, there should be further joint work among neurolinguists and surgeons, as well as new emerging neurolinguistics-oriented therapeutic studies with the application of various neurovisualizational methods.

HSE researchers found different patterns of brain activity involved in processing instrumental and non-instrumental verbs.

For the last 70 years, it was largely believed that spatial processing disorders, including those seen in language, occurred when the temporal-parietal-occipital (TPO) junction of the brain’s left hemisphere was damaged. But according to researchers from the HSE Neurolinguistics Laboratory, it is the damages to the axonal fibers connected to this area of the brain that are most important.

Voluntary health insurance schemes tend to enhance access to healthcare for those who are not much in need.

Interesting work, the desire to help patients, and money – these are the three key factors which motivate Russian doctors to perform, while career ambitions remain a secondary consideration, according to HSE research.

Many people in Russia know about the Dima Rogachev Centre – particularly those who have faced the challenge of child cancer. The centre is Europe's largest pediatric cancer care facility and is named after a boy with advanced cancer who wrote a letter to President Putin inviting him to visit; the invitation was accepted, and after the visit, the decision was made to build a state-of-the-art Centre for Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Immunology, based in the Research Institute of Pediatric Hematology. The new centre was named after Dmitry 'Dima' Rogachev who died two years later at the age of 12 while the centre was still under construction.

Over the past two decades, the average life expectancy in Russia has increased by 2.3 years for women and 1.4 years for men, according to a recently published paper based on the WHO's Global Burden of Disease (GBD) assessment – a major epidemiological study by a group of international experts, including Vasily Vlassov, Professor of the HSE Department of Health Care Administration and Economy.

Overall, Russians tend to be satisfied with their country's health care system, particularly when they do not need to deal with it; however, those with recent first-hand experience of healthcare often complain about the lack of professionalism and the decline in free medical services, according to Sergey Shishkin, Head of HSE's Department of Health Care Administration and Economy, and Natalia Kochkina and Marina Krasilnikova, sociologists with the Levada Centre, in their paper Health Care Service Availability and Quality as Assessed by the Russian Public.

According to homeopaths, an increasing number of Russian patients trust their methods. Meanwhile, conventional medicine does not take homeopathy seriously, viewing it as 'supplementary therapy' at best and as quackery and an occult practice at worst, according to Radik Sadykov, Lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology of the HSE's Department of General Sociology

The markets for healing and witch doctors are often developed in smaller cities and also serve nearby rural areas as well. Such centres of “informal healthcare” most commonly thrive among individuals who have become disappointed with traditional medicine or among those who do not have access to traditional medicine, Yulia Krasheninnikova, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Management’s Department of State and Municipal Management at HSE Perm campus, said in the study “Beyond the Healthcare System: The Development of Alternative Health Services in Urban and Rural Areas.”

Many patients are dissatisfied with the health services they receive, but prepared to pay doctors extra for quality care. Doctors, in turn, consider it normal to receive cash or gifts from grateful patients. However, the line can be very thin between gratitude and extortion, according to a study by Alla Chirikova, Senior Research Fellow of the RAS Institute of Sociology, and Sergei Shishkin, Academic Supervisor of the HSE's Institute for Health Economics, published in the Universe of Russia journal