Lomonosov Psychology Journal, 2010, 4, 184.

The article is devoted to short review of history of one of the leading scientific schools in Russian psychophysiology founded by Professor of Moscow Sate University E.N. Sokolov. The basic ideas and scientific achievements of the school are described and analyzed.

The article describes the initial period in the development of E.N. Sokolov’s ideas in psychophysiology and their further advancement in psychophysiological and neurophysiological research studies.

The determinations of general and differential psychophysiology are presented. Specific character of their subject and methods are shown. Some productive ways of mutual influence of Teplov’s and Sokolov’s scientific schools are considered. Sokolov’s school: research of activation-inactivation, functional states, orienting reflex has determined the development of informative and valuable electrophysiological methods of diagnostics of stable typological properties of nervous system. Presence of many psychological correlations of properties of nervous system (especially of arousability) allows to consider them as innate prerequisites of individual differences and individuality. Teplov’s school: action of every general law is refracted by the “individuality factor”. Investigation of group differences in development of functional states of monotony, exhaustion, satiety specifies conditions of linear and U-shaped dependence in activity effectiveness.

The work presented is devoted to the contribution of E.N. Sokolov and the members of his scientific school into understanding of the neuronal mechanisms of memory formation, in developing of ideas on pacemaker activity participation into neuronal plasticity, to formation of the command neuron conception into behavior and cognitive processes. The contribution of the Sokolov’s collaborators and his followers into developing him “conceptual reflex arc” was emphasized in the review presented.

In article the basic results received by E.N. Sokolov in experiences on studying of mechanisms of memory are presented. E.N. Sokolov has developed a system of experiments helped to refine the analysis of the mechanisms of memory. As experimental model of memory the habituation was used and as research methods various objective indicators of work of a brain — from EEG to intracellular potentials of single neuronswere applied. The experiments gave the possibility to formulate the concept of nervous model of stimuli and synaptic potentiation as a basis for remembering the properties of an effective signal. This article gives a brief overview of these works.

The article is devoted brain activity and its investigation in the psychophysiological school by E.N. Sokolov. The role of novelty neurons in hippocampus and nonspecific neurons of thalamus in an origin of cortical activation processes is shown. Resonance properties of EEG and evoked potentials components in human and animals are revealed. Representation about EEG as a total activity of set of local wave generators is formulated. The new EEG-parameter as activated frequency-selective gamma- and the bеtа-generators displaying activity of pacemaker neurons in local neuron networks, confirming the concept of vector coding the information is allocated.

Discrimination of colors and brightness was studied with instrumental learning paradigm in monkeys (Macaque rhesus) and fish (Carpio Cyprinus L.). The confusion matrices composed of percentage of instrumental responses were treated by principal components analysis. The spherical structure of perceptual color and brightness spaces revealed in both animals was similar to those in humans with normal color vision. In concordance with spherical model the eigenvectors constituting these spaces correspond to neuronal channels that encode differences between stimuli in color and brightness.

This article is devoted to E.N. Sokolov and his role in the scientific guidance to neurophysiology studies. Research of animal’s visual cortex neurons showed that many features of neuronal discharges, e.g. correlation with EEG-activity, coincide with such features revealed in human psychophysiology studies. Sensory spaces were revealed using the rates of animal’s neuronal discharges in response to substitution of stimuli with different intensity, color and orientation. These spaces were similar to such spaces reconstructed using psychophysiological methods in human. Coincidence of spaces structure and some other facts corroborate the theory of vector encoding of information in nervous system.

Terrestrial snails Helix are the strategic objects for the psychophysiological studies at the scientific school united by the research strategy “Human—Neuron—Model”. E.N. Sokolov considered studies of the snails’ neurons as very meaningful for the theory of psychophysiology. The unified spherical model developed by Sokolov using vectorial approach consists from the elements similar to the nerve cells. “Simpler nervous systems” of mollusks such the snails present a possibility for experimental testing of spherical model at the level of real neurons and synapses. A task of following talk is to present the results obtained at the snails’ neurons under leadership of E.N. Sokolov and the experiments that he planned for future studies of the spherical model at the level of neurons and synapses.

We discussed the brain mechanisms of audiovisual integration and semantic comprehension as a direct process of comprehension (early integration) and process with second tuning (late integration) necessary in conflict situations. Existing of such audiovisual semantic conflict and four strategies to solve it were obtained in psychophysical experiment. Mathematic models were formulated according to that data. All models were described by linear equations, which were noted for the different weights of contributions of audio and visual modalities.