[History of the mainstream scientific research at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences].

The classical reflex theory of the higher nervous activity has been developed in the works of E.A. Asratyan, the first director of the Institute, and his scientific school. The novel aspects of the theory have been developed: the principle of system organization; the concept of the nervous center as a set of structures located in different areas of the central nervous system; conditioned switchover, the mechanism of conditioned connection closure; the origin and localization of conditioned inhibition; the two-way, forward and backward conditioned connections. The elaboration of physiological mechanisms of the active goal-directed motivated behavior was begun. V.S. Rusinov and his collaborates have developed the concept of the dominanta and role of the stationary excitation foci in the integrative brain activity. M.N. Livanov has created the concept of the spatio-temporal organization of bioelectric potential and systemic organization of brain activity. P.V. Simonov, beginning from 1964, has developed the need-informational theory of the human and animal higher nervous activity (behavior). As distinct from the theories that originate from a single viewpoint and reject all the others, Simonov's theory is integrative and follows the logic of development of brain science.