Ivan Pavlov: A Brief Biography Of Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov was born on September 26th , 1849 in Ryazan, a small village in Russia. He died on February 27th, 1936 at the age of 87. Inspired by the progressive ideas , Pavlov abandoned his religious career and decided to devote his life to science. In 1870 he enrolled in the physics and mathematics faculty to take a course in natural science.

Pavlolv became very involved with physiology. He produced his first work on the physiology of the pancreatic nerves during his first course. He continued his studies in the Academy of Medical Surgery. There, he won a fellowship and a position as a Director of the Physiological Laboratory at a clinic. This enabled him to continue his research. In his projects, Pavlov showed that there existed a basic

Under his direction, which continued over a period of 45 years to the end of his life, this Institute became one of the most important centers of physiological research.

In 1890 Pavlov was appointed Professor of Pharmacology at the Military Medical Academy and five years later he was appointed to the Chair of Physiology, which he held till 1925.

It was at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in the years 1891-1900 that Pavlov did the bulk of his research on the physiology of digestion. His discovery started a new era in the development of physiology. He showed that the nervous system played a big part in regulating the digestive process, and this discovery is the basis of modern physiology of digestion. Pavlov published the results of his research in this field.

Pavlov 's research into the physiology of digestion led him to create a science of conditioned reflexes. Pavlov started from the idea that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn. For example, dogs don’t learn to salivate whenever they see food. This reflex is in the nature of a dog. In behaviorist terms, it is an unconditioned

This must have been learned, because at one point the dogs did not do it, so their behavior had changed. A change in behavior of this type must be the result of learning.

In behaviorist terms, the lab assistant was originally a neutral stimulus, it produced no response. What had happened was that the neutral stimulus (the lab assistant) had become associated with an unconditioned stimulus (food).In his experiment, Pavlov used a bell as his neutral stimulus. Whenever he gave food to his dogs, he also rang a bell. After a number of repeats of this procedure, he tried the bell on its own. The bell on its own started to cause an increase in salivation.
So the dog had learned an association between the bell and the food and a new behavior had been learnt. Because this response was learned, it is called a conditioned response. The neutral stimulus has become a conditioned stimulus.
Pavlov found that for associations to be made, the two stimuli had to be presented close together in time. He called this the law of temporal contiguity. If the time between the conditioned stimulus (bell) and unconditioned stimulus (food) is too great, then learning will not