Search

Introduction. This article analyzes the specifics of the perception of Italian brands in Russia. The starting point in the paper is the understanding that the evolution of Italian culture and the image of Italy itself has led to the perception of this phenomenon through the prism of both its numerous attributes and Italian brands in particular. Today Italy is associated with national cuisine, culture and historical heritage.From a sociological perspective, brands are an important resource for the representation of national culture, especially for foreign consumers. To date, however, there has been little research into how this culture is transmitted through brands to society. In particular, little attention has so far been paid to studying the perception of brands and their relationship to the national culture of the country they represent.The socio-cultural perspective of the study implies an examination of the dynamics of attitudes towards Italian brands, reflecting the variability of society itself.Methodology and sources. The methodological basis is an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of studying and analyzing brands. The main research method in the work is the Internet survey. Thus, based on the theoretical concepts on the study of brands in sociology, in April 2020 on the platform ”Google Form” the authors conducted an empirical study. The purpose of this research was to conduct an online survey to identify the attitudes of Russian respondents towards Italian brands. The results of the sociological research conducted in the form of a questionnaire survey are presented. The sample type was random with the number of 150 respondents.Results and discussion. According to the survey results, the main associations associated with the image of Italy are: Italian food, holidays, fashion and historical heritage. At the same time, about one fifth of respondents are not familiar with any of the Italian brands or cannot name them. Among those familiar with Italian brands, 80 % responded that they know Gucci, Fendi, Valentino, Versace, Moschino, Giorgio Armani, Prada, Roberto Cavalli, Dolce & Gabbana, Lamborghini, Maserati and Ferrari.One of the key findings of the study was the conclusion that brand perception today is not directly related to its country of origin. The brand does not always represent the country, becoming multicultural. The socio-cultural model of consumption is changing, and the understanding of the Italian brand is divorced from the cultural foundation from which it originated.Conclusion. In general, the authors of the article come to the conclusion that the perception of Italian brands in Russia is conditioned by the specifics of sociocultural development. In the early nineties, when the country had just opened up to Western brands, it was vital for the consumer to purchase products from well-known brands, in particular the «Made in Italy» category, firmly associated with the country of origin. Today, in the context of globalization and multiculturalism, many brands have lost their national identity, and for the consumer the consumer properties of the product come first, and not the brand itself.

Currently, a distributed bilateral network of frontal-parietal areas is regarded as the neural substrate of working memory (WM), with the verbal WM network being more left-lateralized. This conclusion is based primarily on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data that provides correlational evidence for brain regions involved in a task. However, fMRI cannot differentiate the areas that are fundamentally required for performing a task. These data can only come from brain-injured individuals who fail the task after the loss of specific brain areas. In addition to the lack of complimentary data, is the issue of the variety in the WM tasks used to assess verbal WM. When different tasks are assumed to measure the same behavior, this may mask the contributions of different brain regions. Here, we investigated the neural substrate of WM by using voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) in 49 individuals with stroke-induced left hemisphere brain injuries. These participants completed two different verbal WM tasks: complex listening span and a word 2-back task. Behavioral results indicated that the two tasks were only slightly related, while the VLSM analysis revealed different critical regions associated with each task. Specifically, significant detriments in performance on the complex span task were found with lesions in the inferior frontal gyrus, while for the 2-back task, significant deficits were seen after injury to the superior and middle temporal gyri. Thus, the two tasks depend on the structural integrity of different, non-overlapping frontal and temporal brain regions, suggesting distinct neural and cognitive mechanisms triggered by the two tasks: rehearsal and cue-dependent selection in the complex span task, versus updating/auditory recognition in the 2-back task. These findings call into question the common practice of using these two tasks interchangeably in verbal WM research and undermine the legitimacy of aggregating data from studies with different WM tasks. Thus, the present study points out the importance of lesion studies in complementing functional neuroimaging findings and highlights the need to consider task demands in neuroimaging and neuropsychological investigations of WM.

Almost 70 years ago, Alexander Luria incorporated semantic aphasia among his aphasia classifications by demonstrating that deficits in linking the logical relationships of words in a sentence could co-occur with non-linguistic disorders of calculation, spatial gnosis and praxis deficits. In line with his comprehensive approach to the assessment of language and other cognitive functions, he argued that deficits in understanding semantically reversible sentences and prepositional phrases, for example, were in line with a single neuropsychological factor of impaired spatial analysis and synthesis, since understanding such grammatical relationships would also draw on their spatial relationships. Critically, Luria demonstrated the neural underpinnings of this syndrome with the critical implication of the cortex of the left temporal-parietal-occipital (TPO) junction. In this study, we report neuropsychological and lesion profiles of 10 new cases of semantic aphasia. Modern neuroimaging techniques provide support for the relevance of the left TPO area for semantic aphasia, but also extend Luria's neuroanatomical model by taking into account white matter pathways. Our findings suggest that tracts with parietal connectivity the arcuate fasciculus (long and posterior segments), the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, the superior longitudinal fasciculus II and III, and the corpus callosum are implicated in the linguistic and non-linguistic deficits of patients with semantic aphasia. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The main goal of this paper was to disentangle encoding and retrieval interference effects in anaphor processing and thus to evaluate the hy- pothesis predicting that structurally inaccessible nouns (distractors) are not considered to be potential anaphor antecedents during language pro- cessing (Nicol & Swinney, 1989). Three self-paced reading experiments were conducted: one in German, comparing gender-unmarked reflexives and gender-marked pronouns, and two in Russian, comparing gender- marked and gender-unmarked reflexives. In the German experiment, no interference effects were found. In the first experiment in Russian, an unexpected reading times pattern emerged: in the condition where the distractor matched the gender of the reflexive’s antecedent, reading of the gender-unmarked, but not the gender-marked reflexives was slowed down. The same reading times pattern was replicated in a second experiment in Russian where the order of the reflexive and the main verb was inverted. We conclude that the results of the two experiments in Russian are in- consistent with the retrieval interference account, but can be explained by encoding interference and additional semantic processing efforts asso- ciated with the processing of gender-marked reflexives. In sum, we found no evidence that would allow us to reject the syntax as an early filer ac- count (Nicol & Swinney, 1989)

The article describes the algorithm of the terrain attractiveness assessment based on morphological features relief identification. Proposed technology will accelerate the process of the most attractive areas selecting with high accuracy and execution time.

A growing literature is pointing towards the importance of white matter, tracts in understanding the neural mechanisms of language processing, and determining the nature of language deficits and recovery patterns in aphasia. Measurements extracted from diffusion-weighted (DW) images provide comprehensive in vivo measures of local micro structural properties of fiber pathways. In the current study, we compared microstructural properties of major white matter tracts implicated in language processing in each hemisphere (these included arcuate fasciculus (AF), superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), inferior frontal-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), uncinate fasciculus (UF), and corpus callosum (CC), and corticospinal tract (CST) for control purposes) between individuals with aphasia and healthy controls and investigated the relationship between these neural indices and language deficits.Thirty-seven individuals with aphasia due to left hemisphere stroke and eleven age matched controls were scanned using DW imaging sequences. Fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), radial diffusivity (RD), axial diffusivity (AD) values for each major white matter tract were extracted from DW images using tract masks chosen from standardized atlases. Individuals with aphasia were also assessed with a standardized language test in Russian targeting comprehension and production at the word and sentence level.Individuals with aphasia had significantly lower FA values for left hemisphere tracts and significantly higher values of MD, RD and AD for both left and right hemisphere tracts compared to controls, all indicating profound impairment in tract integrity. Language comprehension was predominantly related to integrity of the left IFOF and left ILF, while language production was mainly related to integrity of the left AF. In addition, individual segments of these three tracts were differentially associated with language production and comprehension in aphasia. Our findings highlight the importance of fiber pathways in supporting different language functions and point to the importance of temporal tracts in language processing, in particular, comprehension. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The e-portfolio development and introduction are based on the fact that the reflective practice of its creation allows students to document and track learning, develop a coherent picture of experience, and improve self-understanding. The study took place at Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia); an assessment tool to design and develop electronic portfolios in the higher education system has been developed and tested in the study. A survey focused on the value of an electronic portfolio, which was positively assessed by the respondents, was conducted. The students participating in the study developed e-portfolios that described their reflections on the learning process and backed the arguments made with proof. The assessment showed that 60% of students should improve their cooperation skills while skills related to conceptualization and implementation, critical thinking and decision-making, assessment and modification, meta-cognition and progress should be developed in 44%, 33%, 52%, and 64% of students, respectively. The research results confirm that e-portfolios provide an appropriate platform for integrative learning that allows students to visualize the relationship between various concepts learned throughout the course and beyond.

Despite a persistent interest in verb processing, data on the neural underpinnings of verb retrieval are fragmentary. The present study is the first to analyze the contributions of both grey and white matter damage affecting verb retrieval through action naming in stroke. We used voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) with an action naming task in 40 left-hemisphere stroke patients. Within the grey matter, we revealed the critical involvement of the left precentral and inferior frontal gyri, insula, and parts of basal ganglia. An overlay of white matter tract probability masks on the VLSM lesion map revealed involvement of left-hemisphere long and short association tracts with terminations in the frontal areas; and several projection tracts. The involvement of these structures is interpreted in the light of existing picture naming models, semantic control processes, and the embodiment cognition framework. Our results stress the importance of both cortico-cortical and cortico-sub-cortical networks of language processing.