26 Facts About Vladimir Bekhterev

Vladimir Bekhterev is best known for noting the role of the hippocampus in memory, his study of reflexes, and Bekhterev's disease.

Vladimir Bekhterev was born in Sorali, a village in the Vyatka Governorate of the Russian Empire between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains.

Beside Vladimir Bekhterev they had two more sons in the family: Nikolai and Aleksandr, older than he by 6 and 3 years respectively.

In 1864 the family moved to Vyatka, and within a year the head of the family died of tuberculosis when Vladimir Bekhterev was still very young.

Vladimir Bekhterev took time off from his studies in order to help the war effort by volunteering with an ambulance detachment.

In 1878, Vladimir Bekhterev graduated from the Medical and Surgery Academy of St Petersburg with a degree similar to a Bachelor of Medicine.

Vladimir Bekhterev's scholarship lasted until September 1885, after which, he returned to Russia and worked as the head of the Psychiatry Department at the University of Kazan until 1893.

Vladimir Bekhterev established the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Russia in 1886 to study the nervous system and the structures of the brain.

When conducting research at the University of Kazan, Vladimir Bekhterev identified Ankylosing Spondylitis or Vladimir Bekhterev's disease, a degenerative arthritis of the spine.

In 1893, Vladimir Bekhterev left the University of Kazan to return to St Petersburg Military Medical Academy to become the head to the Department of Nervous and Mental Diseases where he worked with Alexandre Dogiel.

Between 1894 and 1905 Vladimir Bekhterev was very busy with his research.

Vladimir Bekhterev completed between 14 and 24 scientific works per year and founded Nevrologicheski Vestnik in 1893, the first Russian journal on nervous disease.

Vladimir Bekhterev stresses the difference between suggestion and hypnosis Bekhterev was interested in phenomena of direct mental suggestion and made experiments to influence behavior of dogs at distance.

Vladimir Bekhterev founded the Psychoneurological Institute at the St Petersburg State Medical Academy; however, he was forced to resign in 1913 as a professor at the Military Medical Academy in St Petersburg.

Vladimir Bekhterev was reinstated in 1918 following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and became the chairperson for the Department of Psychology and Reflexology at the University of Petrograd in St Petersburg as well as established the Institute of Studying Brain Mental Activities.

Vladimir Bekhterev participated in creating health services in the "young country" of Russia.

Vladimir Bekhterev was familiar with Pavlov's work and had multiple criticisms.

Vladimir Bekhterev found fault with this method because it could not be easily used on humans.

Vladimir Bekhterev questioned using acid to encourage saliva from the animals.

Finally, Vladimir Bekhterev criticized Pavlov's method by stating that the secretory reflex is unimportant and unreliable.

Pavlov however was not without his own criticisms of Vladimir Bekhterev, stating that Vladimir Bekhterev's laboratory was poorly controlled.

Vladimir Bekhterev was a co-founder of the First All-Russian Congress of Neurologists and Psychiatry, held in December 1927 in Moscow, and was appointed as an Honorary President of the Congress.

On 23 December 1927, after having lectured on child neurology at the Congress, Vladimir Bekhterev went to the Kremlin to examine Joseph Stalin.

Vladimir Bekhterev was a force in the science of neurology; greatly expanding knowledge on how the brain works as well as the parts of the brain.

Vladimir Bekhterev's works laid the groundwork for the future of psychology.

Vladimir Bekhterev's ideas regarding Objective psychology as well as his views on reflexes were a cornerstone of behaviorism.