Reflexology

Reflexology is not really a part of behavioral neurology. However, it is important as a part of Soviet social psychology history. Reflexology as practiced by Sechenov affected Pavlov and per Bekhterev affected Luria. Understanding the details is less important, in the history of behavioral neurology as understanding a general gmish, or context of reflexology and how it fits into what came later.

Collective Reflexology by Bekhterev was published in 1921, and greatly influenced those who followed, including those who did not agree with it, such as Vygotsky, and those who rose to be more prominent, such as Pavlov. There was no second edition, and it is said that this volume reflects the Revolution in great detail.

At its genesis is the thesis that the mind is the synthesis of the biological brain and the social environment. Evolutionarily, speech enabled abstract thought and writing enabled history. Brain reflexes can be simple (fright or flight)social, primitve (anger, hunger) or complex. Folk psychology or national spirit is said to exist.

According to Sechenov, psychological acts are a series of reflex acts formed through the activity of cerebral structures and which are associated and integrated among themselves. Sechenov started out studying the spinal cord, and reflexes in decapitated frogs scratched on their bellies, and generalized his spinal cord physiology to the brain, postulating connections between sensory inputs and motor responses. Sechenov postulated emotional reflexes as simple reflexes such as those above, complicated by an emotional factor such as hunger, etc. Psychological reflexes are more complex yet, with a psychological factor intervening. Sechenov's physiology research showed eg. central inhibition, an idea that would later permeate Luria's work. Basically, Sechenov reduced psychology to physiology. His students, the so- called Petersburg school, ultimately became muscle physiologists, studying precise rules of excitatory and inhibitory behavior.

Psychophysics further studies the relation between physiology and psychology. eg. the galvanic response, and concerned itself with processes such as fatigue and others.

According to Mecacci, Bekhterev's reductionism was completely different than Sechenov's as it it attempted to explain not only physiology and psychology but also all living phenomena including sociology. Bekhterev was a neurologist, unlike Sechenov and Pavlov ( a gasterenterologist). He supposed that an energy gave rise to physiology, the mind and society. "Associative reflexes" (the equivalent of Pavlov's conditioned reflexes) were due to connections formed between 2 distinct cortical centers. There is a picture (p.20 of Mecacci's book) of someone reading, with connections from the optic nerve to the LGB, the occipital cortex and the language areas. Vygotsky felt the most important part of the work was the elementary (inborn) reflexes such as suck, snout which "form the fundamental nucleus of mental functions."

Pavlov was a GI specialist, who spent the first two decades of his career studying salivation not the brain. Pavlov was criticised for foraying into the CNS and psychology which he did after he won the Nobel Prize. The Central Nervous System (CNS) describing the formation of conditioned reflexes was more conceptual than real and CNS was said to mean "Conceptual Nervous Sytem." It was said by BF Skinner to be analagous to Sherrington's postulate of a synapse in the spinal cord reflex arc, 20 years before the synapse was described. The behavioral act was described in neuroconceptual terms such as inhibition and excitation that were temporary and meant eventually to be replaced by a neurophysiological explanation. The fact that the Soviets misused Pavlov's ideas and made them rigid is not entirely his fault. It was his fault insofar as his ideas wre incompletely expressed and clarified. Later, Konorski and Hebb clarified many of Pavlov's ideas.

Luria utilized the framework of many of Pavlov's idease which only can be understood in the context of. The theory of reciprocal induction is that surrounding an area of excitation is a process of inhibition. Kornilov and Hebb differentiated between elementary and higher cortical activity and from 1925-1935 there was a lot of energy and work going through. Later in the 1950's Pavlov's work became "dogma" that stifled neuropsychological research.

Vygotsky criticises the approaches of Bekhterev (reflexology explains everything), or Kornilov (reactive), Pavlov (conditioned reflexes) and behaviorism (American movement ,independently arising).

Buridano's donkey illustrated the problem. A hungry donkey caught between 2 sacks of hay on either side cannot decide between them and dies of starvation. The 2 sacks produce equal and "opposite" physiological reactions and the behavior of the animal is inhibited. The qualitative leap of "stimulus - means" as illustrated by Leontiev's experiment signified new cerebral connections. Older children could follow rules by grouping colors etc. due to their having "language" a verbal code.

According to Pavlov, a word can assume the value of a conditioned stimulus or an unconditioned stimulus if it caused the pushing of a button. The first signal is activities of analysis and synthesis, and the second signal, peculiar to man, is the activity of analysis and synthesis of words, verbal signals which "make us human." The second signal-- words-- exhibits a strong inhibitory action over the first signal-- sensory analysis -- only in older children. Luria rejected the idea of language as a reflex arc but considered it as standpoint of historical-cultural school as a process that programs and guides behavior not reflexively though. Vygotsky was republished in 1956 and after 1962 there was a Congress that revised the orthodoxy concerning Pavlov.