Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was born on September 14, 1849, in Ryazan, Russia. The son of a priest, he attended a church school and theological seminary. However, he was inspired by the ideas of Charles Darwin and I.M. Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, and gave up his theological studies in favor of scientific pursuit. Pavlov studied chemistry and physiology at the University of St. Petersburg and received the degree of Candidate of Natural Sciences in 1875. He then enrolled at the Imperial Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, completing his graduate dissertation on the centrifugal nerves of the heart in 1883. He spent many years developing surgical techniques permitting studying gastric and salivary secretions in intact dogs while being part of experiments before he began his definitive experiments. He then Chaired the Department of Physiology at the newly created Institute of Experimental Medicine and also named Professor of Pharmacology at the Imperial Medical Academy, and five years later was appointed to its vacant Chair of Physiology. In his most famous experiment, he sounded a tone just before presenting dogs with food, conditioning them to begin salivating every time he sounded the tone. Pavlov published his results in 1903, and delivered a presentation on The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals at the 14th International Medical Congress in Madrid, Spain, later that year. His type of conditioning became known as Pavlovian, Classical or Respondent Conditioning, to distinguish it from instrumental or operant learning.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 22:52:32 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015