Beschreibung:

PAVLOV, Ivan Petrovich (1849-1936). Lekzii o rabotje bolschih poluscharij golovnovo mozga. [Lectures on the function of the Cerebral Hemisphere.] Moscow and Leningrad: 1927. A fine copy of Pavlov’s definitive formulation of the theory of conditional reflexes. The first edition thus (second in all), printed in the same year as the first, with corrections, considerably enlarged, and with the addition of a specialist bibliography. ‘Pavlov localized conditioned-reflex activity in the cerebral hemispheres of the brain, demonstrating that the center for such activity is to be found in the cortex’ (DSB X, pp. 431-4). Pavlov’s pioneering investigation of conditional reflexes had begun in his lectures on the digestive glands, when he demonstrated that the effects of feeding were transmitted to the gastric glands by nervous channels, so that gastric juice could be made to flow from the gastric glands even when food was prevented from entering the stomach. But it was Pavlov's successive study of this phenomenon, pursued in the context of his studies of behaviour and of the physiology of the brain, which led him to develop the concept of the 'conditioned reflex,' in contrast to the 'unconditioned reflex' of internally activated processes like digestion. Because of the wide-ranging significance of his discovery of the conditioned reflex, in recent years Pavlov 'has come to be regarded as a mechanist who saw complex behaviour as the sum of individual conditioned reflexes. This is a profound error, since in Pavlov's view the brain, through its capacity for subtle analysis and complex synthesis, integrates a vast range of conditioned reflexes into coherent behaviour corresponding to the specific circumstances and needs of the organism' (DSB). Octavo (241 x 167mm). (Occasional very faint marginal browning). Original printed wrappers (edges a little worn, head of spine with a minute chip).