Learning from the Soviet Union
Liping Bu, Ka-che Yip in Public Health and National Reconstruction in Post-War Asia, 2014
The Russian physiologist, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849–1936) was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904 “in recognition of his work on the physiology of digestion, through which knowledge on vital aspects of the subject has been transformed and enlarged.”1 Pavlov’s contributions to physiology and neurological sciences were best demonstrated in the research of temperament, conditioning and involuntary reflex actions. The concept for which Pavlov is famous is the “conditioned reflex” that he developed jointly with his assistant Ivan Filippovich Tolochinov (1859–1920) in 1901. He came to discover conditioned reflex when examining the rates of salivations among dogs.2 Pavlov’s work with classical conditioning fundamentally changed people’s perceptions of themselves, their behavior and learning processes; and his findings continue to be central to modern behavior therapy.3 In 1902, he read a paper titled “The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals” at the 14th International Medical Congress in Madrid. In 1912 he was given an honorary doctorate by Cambridge University, and in the following years, he was awarded honorary membership in various scientific societies abroad. When Pavlov’s early papers were translated into English, they were received with interest, enthusiasm and even acclaim in Britain and America. Some claimed that Pavlovian ideas were better known and appreciated abroad than at home.4 Pavlov was even awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor of France in 1915.5
Major Depression: A Brief History of Western Medical Treatment
Scott Mendelson in Herbal Treatment of Major Depression, 2019
The modern era of medicine can be said to have begun in the mid-1800s. At that time, the great physiologist, Rudolf Virchov, laid the foundations of our modern understanding of the phenomenon of inflammation. Pasteur and Koch developed the germ theory of disease, and Joseph Lister recognized and promoted the notion of antiseptics. In the 1880s, Ivan Pavlov began his study of the conditioned reflex that later earned him the 1904 Nobel Prize. Ramon y Cajal drew and cataloged the microscopic details of the brain’s neurons that led to his Nobel Prize in 1906. In the 1890s, Sir Charles Sherrington began his Nobel-winning research into the mechanisms of action of the nervous system. It was during the late 1800s that German neurologists developed the field that later gave birth to psychiatry as a field unto itself. The German neuropsychiatrist, Wilhelm Griesinger, set the stage for modern psychiatry in his 1848 statement that “mental diseases are brain diseases.”
A Biopsychosocial Approach to Anxiety
Stephen M. Stahl, Bret A. Moore in Anxiety Disorders: A Guide for Integrating Psychopharmacology and Psychotherapy, 2013
In the first half of the 20th century, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov first introduced the concept of learned associations in his well-known experiments on classical conditioning. While studying digestive reflexes in dogs, Pavlov (1927) recognized that the animals responded predictably to salient cues in their environment, such as salivating at the sight of food. He also observed that the natural salivation response to food could be elicited by random stimuli that attained significance through repeated pairings with the food. Pavlov trained his research subjects to associate the sound of a bell with the presentation of food by presenting the two stimuli simultaneously or within close temporal proximity. Further, the dogs learned to associate the presentation of food with the environments in which they were experimentally trained, salivating at the mere sight of Pavlov's laboratory even in the absence of food.
Future projection therapy: Techniques and case examples
Published in American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 2022
Joseph Tramontana, Anna Sharkey, Savannah Hays
In the 1960s, behavioral therapies such as Behavior Modification became popular. Behavior therapy was based on the concepts of learning theory. The tenet is that there is the acquisition of a functional connection between an environmental stimulus and a subject’s response. In classical conditioning (Pavlovian or respondent) a stimulus elicits a response, and the subject emitting the response to the situation alters its frequency of occurrence in the future by congruity. In operant conditioning, reinforcement of the emitted response leads to learning desired responses. Skinner’s book About Behaviorism (1974) gave a good description of what was called the science of behavior. Eysenck (1960) gives a comprehensive review of behavioral approaches in treating neuroses, and Ullmann and Krasner (1966) edited a book titled Case studies in behavior modification which shows how behavioral approaches can be used to change behaviors with many other clinical issues.
The role of placebo effects in immune-related conditions: mechanisms and clinical considerations
Published in Expert Review of Clinical Immunology, 2018
Rosanne M. Smits, Dieuwke S. Veldhuijzen, Nico M. Wulffraat, Andrea W. M. Evers
Another factor that plays a pivotal role in the placebo effect is the learning mechanism based on classical conditioning. In classical conditioning, multiple presentations of a stimulus can lead to a learned association, resulting in a learned bodily response, similar to Pavlov’s famous salivation experiment [20]. This principle can also be applied in treatment regimens, like a pharmacological agent paired with contextual cues such as the color, smell or taste of a capsule, or other features in clinical context, which result in a learned association and eventually cause for comparable drug effects induced by these cues. This learned association between a pharmacological agent and a contextual cue is termed pharmacotherapeutic conditioning (see Figure 2) [21]. By utilizing these placebo effects through classical conditioning, promising treatment outcomes have been found in studies on pain [22] and neuroendocrine- and immune-related outcomes [23,24,25]. Evidence for the ability to learn an immunologic response was demonstrated in several experiments involving validated conditioning paradigms in both animal and human studies. These studies demonstrated that immunological outcomes can be induced by learned associations and furthermore showed several prerequisites in order for a learned immune response to occur, which is very insightful for possible clinical applications in drug regimens and will be further discussed below.
Development and validation of a cognitive model-based novel questionnaire for measuring potential unsafe behaviors of construction workers
Published in International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, 2022
Shuwen Deng, Honglei Zhu, Rui Peng, Yonggang Pan
Behavioral safety research is based on Pavlov’s [24] conditioned reflex experiment in 1927, considering that human behaviors result from external stimulations. Therefore, unsafe behaviors could be prevented by eliminating external stimuli. In terms of methodology, behavioral safety research advocates the study of observable behaviors while ignoring consciousness or other psychological activities. With its focus on the individual level, behavioral safety research aims to improve workers’ safety behaviors through design goals and feedback [25–27]. Nevertheless, compliance with safety behavior criteria often declines to an average level when the intervention program is stopped [28–30]. In addition, behavioral safety research does not go into the causes of unsafe behaviors, nor does it explain the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of interventions [13]. Thus, the effectiveness of behavioral safety research is inherently limited.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Associative Memory
- Behaviorism
- Operant Conditioning
- Physiology
- Digestion
- Stimulus
- Experiment
- Punishment
- Neural Substrate
- Psychology