NEUROPSYCHOLINGUISTICS AS A SCIENTIFIC FIELD

Аннотация

Neuropsycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field that explores the relationship between language and the brain, examining how linguistic processes are represented and function within the neural architecture. This field integrates insights from psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and neuroscience to understand how language is acquired, produced, and comprehended, as well as how brain injuries or neurological disorders affect linguistic abilities. Keywords: neurolinguistics, aphasia, neurobiology, neurophysiology, neuropsychology, neorhetoric, nerve cell, neuron, somatic and autonomic parts. Neuropsycholinguistics originated both in our country and abroad in the late 1950s to early 1960s. It emerged in an interdisciplinary space, at the intersection of at least three sciences: neurology, psychology, and linguistics. The emergence of this field of knowledge was facilitated by the practical needs of aphasiology—an area of medicine that deals with the treatment of individuals suffering from speech disorders due to localized brain damage—aphasias. The "father" of Russian neuropsycholinguistics, Alexander Romanovich Luria, defined it as a field of science that "studies the brain mechanisms of speech activity and the changes in speech processes that occur due to localized brain damage." The first achievements of neurolinguistics were related to solving practical tasks in the diagnosis and correction of speech disorders. However, the connection with psychology and linguistics significantly influenced its aspiration to establish itself as an independent theoretical field of knowledge, with its own unique subject matter and methods. A powerful impetus for the theoretical self-definition of neurolinguistics was the emergence and rapid development in our country of another young science—psycholinguistics. The process of developing local psycholinguistics can be compared in intensity to an explosion. The self-definition of this field of knowledge occurred and continues to occur through an intrusion into neighboring scientific areas. It was psycholinguistics that initially provided a home for neurolinguistics within its scientific territory, rather unabashedly pulling it out of the realm of practical pedagogy and medicine. As of now, neurolinguistics has not yet attained the status of an independent science. Partly, this is due to the lack of unity among leading specialists in this field regarding the fundamental parameters of the science: different researchers define the place of neurolinguistics among other sciences, its subject matter, tasks, and so on, in varying ways. By the way, the lack of dedicated educational literature should also be considered an indicator of the scientific immaturity of the field of knowledge we are examining. Local psycholinguistics increasingly recognizes itself as an independent science, a science with its own unique subject of study, methods, and a range of problems and research tasks that delineate its 6 19 International scientific journal ISSN: 2181-3906 «MODERN SCIENCE АND RESEARCH» 2025 VOLUME 4 / ISSUE 5 / UIF:8.2 / MODERNSCIENCE.UZ boundaries from adjacent fields. Within the context of university education, it appears as a coherent and internally structured educational and scientific discipline. Having emerged in a major direction of global humanitarian thought and stimulated by the practical needs of psychology, pedagogy (including the methodology of teaching both native and foreign languages), neorhetoric, medicine, etc., psycholinguistics has not only managed to carve out its own sovereign scientific space over its fifty-year history but also continues to expand the boundaries of its domain year after year with increasing determination. The object of psycholinguistics should be considered the linguistic personality (i.e., a person in their ability to produce and understand speech), while the subject is communicative competence viewed from an individual-psychological perspective. However, it would be irresponsible to assert that at this point our science has clearly defined contours of external and internal delineation, that its categorical and terminological apparatus has been fully developed and organized, and so on. Indeed, much within our scientific field appears vaguely defined and insufficiently differentiated. Despite recognizing its scientific completeness, high level of influence, and practical demand, psycholinguistics demonstrates a low level of self-reflection. This situation leads to the current stage of its development being characterized as a sort of invariant of different psycholinguistics. It would be more accurate to say that most psycholinguists are convinced that psycholinguistics is a science, but each of them has their own vision of what that science entails. View of psycholinguistics, seeing it as something holistic and unified, reveals a multitude of contradictions regarding almost all key issues. It is important to understand that the human brai