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Scientific school “Systemic psychophysiology’

This scientific school founded by professor V.B.Shvyrkov is now represented by a group of researchers working in V.B.Shvyrkov Laboratory of Neural Bases of Mind. The head of the laboratory is Yu.I. Alexandrov, the disciple of V.B.Shvyrkov.
The laboratory was founded in 1972 by academician P.K.Anokhin (the teacher of V.B.Shvyrkov), the author of the theory of functional systems. The activity of the lab was aimed to elaborate fundamental problems of psychophysiology. The application of the theory of functional systems to solving the problems of psychophysiology done by V.B.Shvyrkov resulted in new direction in psychology – systemic psychophysiology. The main task of it is to study specific features of formation and realization of systems that form individual experience, their taxonomy, the dynamics of intersystemic relations in behaviour.
The structure of individual experience is described in the bounds of systemic psychophysiology as the set of functional systems and intersystemic relations which are established while systems are formed and actualized. The unit of structure of individual experience is considered to be the set of systems formed at different stages of individual experience. The simultaneous actualization of these systems provides result achievement of a behavioral act. Despite rich variety of human and animal studies applied in the lab, separate tasks are interdependent and mutually complementary, which creates holistic research program based on united methodology of systemic psychophysiology. Such unity helps to avoid eclecticism under attempt to integrate the data from different levels of research: from studies on joint and operator’s activity to cellular and subcellular mechanisms of neuronal specialization formation and intersystemic relations in normal and pathologic cases. The efficiency of experimental and theoretical investigations done in the laboratory resulted in the inclusion of systemic psychophysiology as the required part of federal program in psychological education.
Due to the achieved results the laboratory was recognized as one of the Leading Scientific Schools in Russia (in the section of human and social sciences) four times in succession (in 1996, 2000, 2003, 2006).