An interdisciplinary approach to assessing the human constitution in adolescence

Abstract

AIMS: To estimate the efficiency of the interdisciplinary approach to the informative analysis of morphological constitution in young males and females in modern urboecological studies and to perform the integrative assessment of the morphofunctional status of the organism with the indexes of three parameter systems somatometric, psychometric and neurophysiological (electroencephalogram EEG) on a sample of modern Moscow students by using multidimensional analysis
 MATERIAL AND METHODS: A sample of modern Moscow psychology students (95 males and 150 females aged 1820 years old) was used to accomplish the complex study of constitutional status based on three systems of parameters morphological (somatic: skeletal dimensions, girths, and skinfolds), psychological (psychological tests for estimate personal anxiety, autonomic balance, and self-regulation and the Prognosis technique), physiological (EEG: power and coherence in different bands and cuts) by means of factor analysis.
 RESULTS: The first six constant and objective factors in the structure of the total constitution of young males and females were discussed: the factor of longitudinal skeletal development, factor of transversal body development (adiposity first of all), factor of the covariation of the parameters of the psychological system, factor of genetically determined physiological tone (EEG power), and the factors of function of the individual life experience under mediation by the environment intrahemispheric and interhemispheric coherencies. Both sexes had similar results for factor analysis with small differences, which reflected the more dynamic role of adipose tissue in the female organism. Six factors described approximately 70% of the variability in different systems of parameters.
 CONCLUSION: The autonomy of different systems of traits, which is the base of the integrity and plasticity of the organism, is demonstrated. Interdisciplinary studies provide the comparative integrative characteristics of morphofunctional status of various modern ethnic/territorial groups, specify the mechanisms of adaptation to a concentrated anthropogenic environment, provide the correct estimation of the adaptive potential of the organism under the conditions of high levels of anthropogenic pressure, and describe the morphophysiological basis of patterns of behavior.