Pavlov, psychoanalysis, and neuroses

Pavlov's discovery of experiment neurosis was serendipitous, yet it was made under the influence of Breuer and Freud's case of Anna O. In 1914, Pavlov's disciple N. R. Shenger-Krestovnikova, exploring the limits of visual discrimination in dogs, noticed that when the discrimination was difficult, the dogs' behavior became disorganized. Pavlov drew an analogy between the condition of Shenger-Krestovnikova's dogs and their disorganized behavior with Anna O.'s situation and her neurotic reaction. Pavlov concluded that he had demonstrated in the laboratory the elements of neurosis in animals and human alike. Schilder's criticism of his position, his later study of human neuroses in clinical settings, and the views of Janet may have induced Pavlov to differentiate between animal and human neuroses.     

I. P. Pavlov and K. Lorenz

In the thirtieth, the founder of ethology Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz put forward the new theory of behavior, which was met with considerable resistance of the dominant views on the mechanisms of behavior, including Pavlov's concept. From his first theoretical works and later on Lorenz debated with Pavlov. However, these debates were not reduced to a disagreement. He appreciated greatly the scientific contribution of Pavlov, and the ideas of the Russian physiologist were often the starting point of his own speculations. His polemics with Pavlov differed very much from his uncompromising controversies with behaviorists. When Lorenz compared Pavlov's views with behaviorism, he often preferred Pavlov's ideas. Lorenz also draw some parallels between the Pavlov's understanding of behavior and the ethological approach. Lorenz's discussion with Pavlov about the nature of conditioned reflex is of particular interest, since it stimulated Lorenz to develop the theory of this phenomenon.     

Pavlov as a psychologist. A reappraisal

American psychologists are informed on Pavlov's work on conditional reflexes but not on the full development of his theory of higher nervous activity. This article shows that Pavlov's theory of higher nervous activity dealt with concepts that concerned contemporary psychologists. Pavlov used the conditioning of the salivary reflex for methodological purposes. Pavlov's theory of higher nervous activity encompassed overt behavior, neural processes, and the conscious experience. The strong Darwinian element of Pavlov's theory, with its stress on the higher organisms' adaptation, is described. With regard to learning, Pavlov, at the end of his scholarly career, proposed that although all learning involves the formation of associations, the organism's adaptation to the environment is established through conditioning, but the accumulation of knowledge is established by trial and error.     

Pavlov and integrative physiology

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was the first physiologist to win the Nobel Prize. The Prize was given in 1904 for his research on the neural control of salivary, gastric, and pancreatic secretion. A major reason for the success and novelty of his research was the use of unanesthetized dogs surgically prepared with chronic fistulas or gastric pouches that permitted repeated experiments in the same animal for months. Pavlov invented this chronic method because of the limitations he perceived in the use of acute anesthetized animals for investigating physiological systems. By introducing the chronic method and by showing its experimental advantages, Pavlov founded modern integrative physiology. This paper reviews Pavlov's journey from his birthplace in a provincial village in Russia to Stockholm to receive the Prize. It begins with childhood influences, describes his training and mentors, summarizes the major points of his research by reviewing his book Lectures on the Work of the Digestive Glands, and discusses his views on the relationship between physiology and medicine.     

Pavlov vs. K?hler. Pavlov's little-known primate research

During the 1920s, I. P. Pavlov's scholarly interests broadened to consider problem-solving. Distrusting Wolfgang K?hler's Gestalt explanation of the problem-solving process and its interspecies aspects, Pavlov performed, from 1933 to 1936, a number of experiments, including a replication of K?hler's building experiment, using chimpanzees as subjects. Confirming K?hler's findings, Pavlov explained the problem-solving process in terms of unconditional reflexes and the establishment, by Pavlovian conditioning and the Thorndikian method of trial and error, of temporary neural connections identical, on the psychological level, to associations. In contrast to K?hler's "structural" explanation, Pavlov emphasized the processes of analysis and synthesis. According to Pavlov insight is achieved progressively--as the result of the organism's problem-solving behavior--contradicting K?hler's thesis of a sudden subjective reorganization of the environmental situation. Pavlov explained interspecies differences among higher organisms in terms of the range of a species behavior, with the second signal system as the main distinguishing characteristic between human and nonhuman species.     

Pavlov's conceptualization of unconditional reflexes, or instincts, within the framework of the theory of higher nervous activity

According to I. P. Pavlov's theory of higher nervous activity, the establishment and dissolution of conditional reflexes enhances the higher organism's adaptation to the external environment. Pavlov asserted that, ontogenetically, conditional reflexes are based upon innate, unconditional reflexes (UR) or instincts. Pavlov did not distinguish between URs and instincts, but he preferred the former term. Phylogenetically the URs emerged out of well-established conditional reflexes during the development of higher organisms. An outgrowth of the experimental conditioning procedure, developed during the second decade of this century, was the observation and delineation of new URs. While studying human nervous and psychiatric disorders in the 1930s, Pavlov elucidated other URs. Pavlov identified 13 major URs, but he failed to formulate an exhaustive classification scheme of URs.     

I. P. Pavlov--a Full Member (Academician) of Russian Academy of Sciences (100-years anniversary)

I. P. Pavlov, the great Russian physiologist, the founder of a leading scientific school of physiology, first Russian scientist to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Pavlov's work received wide international recognition. He was elected full or honorary member of more than 120 academies, scientific societies and universities. In 1907 he was elected a Full Member (Academician) of Russian Academy of Sciences and headed the Physiological Laboratory of the Academy. In 1925, at his petition, the Laboratory was transformed into the Physiological Institute, remaining his head until 1936, when he had died. Since 1950 this is the Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.     

Slowly forgetting the Pavlovian adventure?

This paper analyses an interesting story, that of the physiologist Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov. While investigating the causes of salivary secretions in the waking, behaving dog, he discovered a class of causes that he called psychic, since they were associated with perceiving a visual, acoustic or other signal, delivered before food that normally created salivation. A temporary relationship was therefore established, between the secretory command and the cerebral site associated with an initially neutral stimulus that had become a signal. This gave rise to the "conditional reflex". Pavlov was probably not the first who had observed this kind of association, but he very skillfully exploited these data to create a coherent conceptual system. In 23 "lectures", he very precisely summarized his views and retraced the fundamental issues explaining the main features of the purely physiological cerebral command of behaviour. The Pavlovian system necessarily became, in the particular environment of the soviet regime, a kind of credo on physical-mental relationships based upon a generalized reflexology, not allowing any deviation, nor any dissidence, nor any concession to subjectivity. The notion of conditional reflex has indeed resisted to time, but number of subtleties of the Pavlovian thinking and many phenomena that he described now seem forgotten and to have lost much of their heuristic value. Most of the recent theories of learning have only rarely followed Pavlov's line, to concentrate on more complex learning modalities.     

Pavlov and the concept of association

I. P. Pavlov was profoundly influenced during his youth by the writings of D. I. Pisarev and I. M. Sechenov. Sechenov explained the voluntary act in terms of the formation of associations among sensory impressions and motor responses. Apparently under Pisarev's influence, Pavlov studied the physiology of the circulatory and digestive systems. In explaining the formation of the conditional reflex (CR), Pavlov rejected the Wundtian, anthropomorphic conceptualization of CR as suggested by A. T. Snarski?. However, using the objective CR method, the Pavlovians experimentally investigated the formation in the cortex of neural connections, which were equated with associations.     

Development of brain networks for orienting to novelty

Among the many contributions of I.P. Pavlov to the study of the higher nervous system was his exploration of the physical basis of attention. Pavlov's analysis of the orienting reflex (OR), together with the contributions of Y.N. Sokolov, demonstrated that attention could be studies by the objective methods of neurophysiology. Cognitive neuroscience has continued these effort by using neuroimaging to explore the anatomy and physiology of attention in the working human brain. It is now possible to show that the appearance of a novel visual event invokes multiple attentional networks that work in concert to orient to and process a novel object within a very brief exposure. In this paper, we describe cognitive studies of orienting to novelty in adults, examine the networks of neural areas involved in processing novel objects, and review the development in early life of these attentional networks. Orienting to novelty provides an excellent vehicle for examining how biology and experience shape the mechanisms of self-regulation and cognitive control.     

A comparative analysis of the conditional reflex discoveries of Pavlov and Twitmyer, and the birth of a paradigm

Research on conditional reflex (CR) in Pavlov's Physiological Laboratory has preceded Twitmyer's work on conditioning at the University of Pennsylvania by 3 or 4 years. The events in Pavlov's laboratory lead toward the postulation of a new paradigm that rejected the Cartesians conceptualization of the reflex as a mechanistic response to stimuli by replacing it with the Darwinian notion of the organism's adaptation to the environmental conditions. The Pavlovian paradigm rejected the Wundtian method in favor of the objective, conditional reflex method.     

The discovery of the principles of reinforcement, extinction, generalization, and differentiation of conditional reflexes in Pavlov's laboratories

The discovery of reinforcement, extinction, generalization, and differentiation with the conditional reflex method in Pavlov's laboratories is described. Modern American introductory texts show that contemporary understanding of the experimental work on conditioning in Pavlov's laboratories is derived from a 1927 English translation of Pavlov's lectures on the conditional reflexes. The lectures present the discoveries topically, not chronologically. In contrast, this article presents a chronological account of the contributions of S.G. Vul'fson, I.F. Tolochinov, and B.P. Babkin, which led to the conceptualization of reinforcement and extinction, and the work of V.N. Boldyrev and N.A. Kashereninova, which led to the formulation of the concepts of generalization and differentiation. This historical approach avoids giving the impression that the development of the Pavlovian paradigm was a highly systematic pursuit.     

The role of trace excitatory processes in the formation of conditioned reflexes to time]

I. P. Pavlov's hypothesis on the role of trace excitation in conditioning to time was verified by mathematical methods proceeding from experimental data on elaborating in rabbits a motor alimentary conditioned reflex to a four-minute interval of time. A connection has been established between the experimental characteristics of formation of a reflex to time and some parameters of the presumed dynamics of trace excitation. The analysis helped to establish the shortest and longest intervals to which a reflex to time can be elaborated by the mechanism of trace reflex, as well as the optimal interval to which it is elaborated more easily. The experimental results so obtained are a significant corroboration to the correctness of the Pavlov hypothesis.     

Neurogenic (Hysteroid) Motor Disorders in Hamadryas Baboons

Pavlov's teaching on experimental neuroses is of prime importance for gaining insight into human neurosis. Pavlov devoted special attention to hysteria (1). His concept of the possibility of creating a model of this human neurosis in dogs was not constant, although the reproduction of individual symptoms of hysteria, especially of paralytic motor disorders, is an indisputable experimental fact, and can be explained within the framework of the principles of higher nervous activity established with respect to dogs.     

A Technique for Inducing Experimental Neurosis in Small Laboratory Animals

Research in the mechanism of endocrine disorders in functional disturbances of the central regulatory apparatus requires the development of an appropriate model of the affection. The employment of an experimental neurosis would seem to be promising in this regard. The Pavlov school has thoroughly elaborated techniques of inducing experimental neuroses in dogs, but when small laboratory animals (mice, rats) are employed in large-scale experiments, existing techniques do not provide a means of inducing a long-lasting pathological condition of the higher centers of the central nervous system.     

Pavlov and the Nobel Prize Award

When Pavlov was first nominated for the Nobel Prize, he was well recognized by physiologists, especially those concerned with digestion. It appears unlikely that psychological interpretations of his conditional reflex findings had begun to penetrate deeply into the discipline of psychology. The selection in 1904 of Pavlov for the award in physiology or medicine attracted the attention of a broader range of scientists. American psychologists, in particular, probably became more aware of the advantages of incorporating his "objective" conditional reflex method into their investigations. General biographical aspects relating to the award and the effect of the award upon the acceptance of the conditional reflex method by American psychologists are developed in this presentation.     

Assessing Pavlov's impact on the American conditioning enterprise

In this article, the visibility of Pavlov and of Watson in American psychology are compared, and the periods of their respective influence are specified with greater precision than is afforded by merely impressionistic methods. The author also critically examines the possibility that the early history of the American classic-conditioning enterprise involved a succession of two phases: a Watsonian/speculative phase and a Pavlovian/empirical phase. In conclusion, the author assesses the possibility that the publication of Pavlov's Conditioned Reflexes (1927) "stimulated" scholarly work on Pavlovian conditioning, and finds this proposition lacking empirical support.     

The interface of natural theology and science in the ethology of W. H. Thorpe

Conclusion It should be clear by now the extent to which many features of Thorpe's interpretation of animal behavior and of the animal mind rested, at bottom, not simply on conventional scientific proofs but on interpretive inferences, which in turn rested on a willingress to make extensions of human experience to animals. This, in turn, rested on his view of evolution and his view of reality. And these were governed by his natural theology, which was the fundamental stratum of his intellectual experience.Contrary to the scientific ethos, which restricts theory choice to scientific issues alone, Thorpe's career suggests that the actual reasons for theory choice among scientists often are not limited to science, but are multiple and may sometimes be difficult to discover. It is largely because Thorpe took a public part in the natural theology enterprise that we can know something about his religious beliefs and so can see their probable influence on his scientific decisions. Similar beliefs of other scientists are sometimes harder to get at. Most may be practically beyond discovery, for the ethos of science has discouraged public professions of personal belief in relation to scientific work.¹⁰¹ Yet does it seem plausible that, for example, the restriction of self-consciousness to humans by some scientists is a purely scientific decision?¹⁰² Surely not, any more than that the strong influence of natural theology on Thorpe's thought means that he was not a good scientist. His natural theology may have led him into incautious enthusiasms regarding the animal mind — such as the potential if unrealizable linguistic ability of chimpanzees — through a bias in favor of the continuity of emergents in a progressive evolutionary system, just as it led him to advocate animal consciousness long before the recent upsurge of interest, but the scientific integrity of his work overall is unimpeachable. And yet, that work is not comprehensible historically as science alone. Personal philosophy must not be discounted in writing the history of recent science. This somewhat obvious conclusion (obvious to historians of science) needs emphasis, for we are still prone to think that the sciences of our own time provide their own internal dynamic that is in itself sufficient to account for their content and development.     

I. P. Pavlov's teacher of physiology I. F. Tsion (1842-1912)]

In 1866, at the C. Ludwig's laboratory, E. F. Cyon discovered n. depressor, and after C. Bernard's presentation he was awarded with the Montion Prize of the Paris Academy of Sciences. In 1867, together with his brother M. Cyon, he discovered nn. accelerantes of heart, which increase the heart rate when being stimulated. From 1868 to 1874 he was a privatdocent an professor of physiology at Saint-Petersburg University, where under his guidance I.P. Pavlov mastered the brilliant technique of vivisection experiment and accomplished his first works on the physiology of circulation and digestion. From 1872 to 1874 E. F. Cyon was physiology professor at Saint-Petersburg Medical-Surgical Academy. He published "Course of Physiology" in 2 volumes, the official speech "Heart and Brain" and others, proposed an original theory of inhibition, improved the reflex theory. He published 197 works, including 151 in German and French. I. P. Pavlov paid a worthy tribute to his teacher and continued the main direction of his investigations.