Today, one of the most important features of life is the increasing influence of various information on a person. Therefore, mental activity associated with the process of receiving, storing, and processing information, requires stress of sensory systems, attention, memory, activation of thinking, emotional sphere, and autonomic systems. During the performance of mental work, there is a need to simultaneously solve dual-tasks or triple-tasks.
It should be noted that the vast majority of studies of mental performance and mechanisms of information processing with the involvement of higher mental, autonomic, and motor functions have been conducted on persons of mature age. We suggested that the formation of mechanisms of mental performance in children, adolescents, and young people, and the interaction of motor, autonomic, neurodynamic systems in performing information tasks of varying complexity and modality, would be different compared with adults. Therefore, the purpose of the dissertation was to establish patterns and mechanisms of formation of neurodynamic, autonomic, and motor support of mental performance in children, adolescents, and young people.
Sensorimotor and neurodynamic computer testing was performed to determine the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of mental capacity of adolescents and young children; cardiointervalography - to find out the features of the autonomic mental capacity of children and adolescents; stabilography - in order to study the statokinetic stability and substantiate the role of the motor component in ensuring the mental capacity of healthy children, adolescents and young people and their peers with postural deformities.
It is found that the mental performance and interaction of the motor, autonomic and neurodynamic systems of the brain in the processing of information of different modalities and complexity in children and adolescents gradually increases and reaches its highest level in adolescents aged 16–17. It is shown that the results of mental performance, speed, and success of neurodynamic and motor tasks on image signals are higher than on verbal stimuli for all age groups. The level of activation of the autonomic nervous system when performing neurodynamic tasks for mental performance depends on the age of the subjects and the rate of presentation of information and does not depend on the modality of the signals. It is also found that the gradual increase in the rate of differentiation in the three-stimulus mode for image signals to 90 per minute, and for verbal signals from 30 to 60 per minute is characterized by the increased mental performance and is accompanied by the activation and enhancement of neurodynamic, motor and ANS. A further increase in the rate of presentation of image signals to 120 and verbal information to 90 per minute leads to the emergence of vegetative neurodynamic dissonance.
In all age groups, the increase in the speed of information presentation was accompanied by a gradual increase in the number of errors and a decrease in the reaction time of differentiating inhibitory and excitatory signals, an increase in heart rate, stress index, centralization index, and a decrease in the total power of the spectrum, the area of regulation of the scattergram, periodic and aperiodic fluctuations of cardio intervals. For the first time, experimental evidence has been shown that an increase in the rate of presentation for the differentiation of figurative and verbal information gradually suppressed the activity of cardiac regulatory mechanisms. It has been shown that the higher the rate of signaling, the greater the suppression of heart rate regulation.
According to the indicators of speed and success of tasks, the closer manifestation of the functional interaction of the neurodynamic system and ANS was found in adolescents aged 16–17, 10–11, and 13–14, than in children aged 7–8 years.
In the case of simultaneous performance of the dual motor and neurodynamic tasks, mental performance and results of motor and neurodynamic tasks on a stable and unstable platform of the stabilograph in healthy children aged 7–8, adolescents aged 10–11, 13–14, and 16–17 were higher than in their peers who had a deformity of posture. Both increasing and decreasing the success of joint mental and motor activities were found. Increasing the effectiveness of one task was accompanied by a decrease in the success of another; besides, reducing the success of the motor task increased the effectiveness of the mental activity. The results of the mental performance improved in the adolescents aged 13–14 and 16–17, both healthy and with postural disorders, under the condition of performing a neurodynamic task with verbal signals on an unstable stabilograph platform, while joining the neurodynamic motor task on an unstable platform in the children aged 7–8 and adolescents aged 10–11 did not change the results of mental performance.
