by Academician Mikhail OSTROVSKY, President of Pavlov Physiological Society, Laboratory Head of Emanuel Institute of Biochemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences The brain science is universal. It includes not only physiology, but also virtually all biological and a number of medical disciplines, physics with its technological progress, chemistry with its potentialities of new drug synthesis, mathematics and informatics-as it is now time to systematize an enormous scope of accumulated data and create, at least tentatively, an information theory of the brain. And, no doubt, this science includes psychology and philosophy. Among the first who started to connect physiology and psychology are our great scientists Ivan Sechenov and Ivan Pavlov, who gave a powerful impetus to the development of Russian physiological school. Fortunately, it still exists. The progress of modern brain science is amazing. It leads to creation of grandious national projects, focused on human health, and of new information technologies (the USA and China are already starting to realize them). Russia should accept this challenge of time as well. We have the scientific potential for this. The only thing needed is potent support. What spheres of neurobiological studies are the most important for us? I suppose at least six important trends of studies of the brain should be distinguished. We shall discuss each of them. стр. 6 EVOLUTION AND INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT It is impossible to understand the nature of human brain with its high mental abilities without understanding the nature of the evolution process. By the way, the term "evolutionary physiology" was suggested in 1914 by Alexei Severtsov, zoologist (Academician from 1920). The formation of this basic research trend is connected with Russian science, with the names of physiologists—Academician Leon Orbeli* and Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Khachatur Koshtoyants. In 1956, Orbeli organized an ... Читать далее