A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL 

 ARCHITECTURE OF CONDITIONED REFLEX 



P. K. Anokhin 



The present conception has taken shape over a period of more than 30 

 years as the result of the work of the author and his pupils on the physio- 

 logy of higher nervous activity. 



The conception proposed in this paper eliminates a number of contra- 

 dictions that have accumulated in the physiology of the conditioned reflex 

 in recent years; it opens new avenues of research in the mechanisms of the 

 conditioned reflex discovered by Pavlov, who revolutionized the study of 

 the behaviour of annuals and man. 



The generally accepted view of the mechanism of the conditioned 

 reflex rests on Descartes's reflex theory expressed in the concept of the 

 'reflex arc'. According to this view, the excitation evoked by a condi- 

 tioned stimulus constitutes the afferent part of the conditioned reflex arc. 

 In the central part of the arc the excitation is transferred from the analyser 

 to the effector part of the reflex and, hnally, the excitation reaches the 

 efferent part of the reflex arc where it stimulates some working organ or 

 combination of organs to action. 



This classical concept has three characteristic features. 



1. In the reflex arc the excitation spreads according to the lincar- 

 translational principle: at each successive moment it spreads to new- 

 neural elements and never returns to the course already traversed. 



2. The reflex arc ends in an adaptive action which, from the point of 

 view of these ideas, forms as an entirely new phenomenon in tlic padi of 

 the linear-translational spread of the conditioned excitation. 



3. The formation of the reflex action in the peripheral working appara- 

 tuses is conceived as a process complctiuo the reflex arc and, consequently, 

 the very adaptive result of the reflex action is not the decisive factor for 

 the dynamic alternation of the processes of excitation and inhibition in the 

 reflex arc. 



The conception proposed below does not exclude the reflex as a prin- 

 ciple of the organism's activity and its relation to the external environ- 

 ment. The reflex invariably constitutes the nucleus of our new ideas. 



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