150 years ago – February 1st 1857 – Vladimir Mikhaylovich Bekhterev, famous Russian neurophysiologist and psychiatrist, who studied the formations of the brain and investigated conditioned reflexes, was born.

To the lay public Vladimir Bekhterev is known for Bekhterev’s disease, pelvospondylitis. Bekhterev’s most important work, however, was in the study of reflexes and the morphology of the brain. He is the founder of psycho reflexology, transmitting to humans the same pattern of thinking that Pavlov had developed in his work on conditioned reflexes in dogs, and he used similar experiments. Bekhterev is thus a forerunner of behaviourism. His works are epoch-making, but at first received little attention as they were published in Russian.