Pyotr Kuzmich Anokhin

Pyotr Kuzmich Anokhin
Born	26 January 1898, Tsaritsyn, Russian Empire
Died	5 March 1974, Moscow, USSR
Nationality	Russian, Soviet
Education
Occupation	Physiologist
Known for	Functional systems; systemogenesis; acceptor of action
Notable works	Biology and Neurophysiology of the Conditioned Reflex and Its Role in Adaptive Behavior (1974)
Website

Pyotr Kuzmich Anokhin (26 January 1898 - 5 March 1974) was a Soviet physiologist. He studied under Ivan Pavlov. From the 1930s he built the theory of functional systems: goal-directed behavior as one working unit of nerves, hormones, sensation, and action. That framework is central to Soviet medicine on this site.

Life

Anokhin was born in Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd). He trained in medicine under Pavlov's school and held senior posts in Soviet medical science (Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR; Academy of Sciences of the USSR). He died in Moscow in 1974.

Functional systems

A functional system starts from a need (food, safety, air). It recruits everything required to meet that need: receptors, memory of what worked, muscle, digestion, glands. In the 1950s Anokhin brought stress endocrinology into the same picture. F. Z. Meerson continued the metabolic and structural work on the heart under load.

One of Pavlov's students, P.K. Anokhin, developed the concept of the Functional System in the 1930s, to explain the purposive behavior of animals. In the 1950s, Anokhin integrated the endocrinology of stress and adaptation into the concept, and F.Z. Meerson continued the work, concentrating on the metabolic and structural changes that protect the heart during stress.

— Ray Peat

Cortisol frees amino acids from idle muscle for organs that are adapting. Use builds structure. Disuse donates material.

Selye's classical stress breakdown fits the same economy: catabolic hormones dissolve one tissue for the system that is working, with CO₂ from active tissue helping stabilize it.

Feedback and the acceptor of action

Between 1932 and 1935 Anokhin developed self-regulating systems and feedback: the organism senses progress and corrects course.

Between 1932 and 1935, a student and colleague of Pavlov's, P.K. Anokhin, developed this idea of self- regulating systems, and originated the concept of feedback, in describing the ways organisms guide themselves and their adaptations.

— Ray Peat

The acceptor of action is the working model of the world in consciousness. Expected sensation and movement stay coupled. Stress meaning runs down to the cell field.

He was a colleague and student of Pavlov, and he devised this cybernetic interpretation of reflexes which sees the model of the world that we have in our consciousness as determining how the reflex works. It makes a very simple way of interpreting other fields, such as Hans Selye's stress process, if you see it in terms of Anokhin's acceptor of action. The meaning of a particular stress and how the body is responding governs the field all the way down to the cell.

— Ray Peat

Nerves carry complex patterned information. Hearing already shows volume, frequency, and tone on shared pathways. Resonance and coherence describe that traffic.

Selected works

• A New Conception of the Physiological Architecture of Conditioned Reflex (1961)
• Systemogenesis as a General Regulator of Brain Development (1964)
• Nodular Mechanism of Functional Systems as a Self-Regulating Apparatus (1968)
• Biology and Neurophysiology of the Conditioned Reflex and Its Role in Adaptive Behavior (1974)
• The essays on physiology of functional systems (1975)
• System mechanisms of higher nervous activity (Moscow, Nauka, 1979)

See also

• Soviet medicine
• Hans Selye
• Stress
• CO2
• Tissue leakiness
• Library:Adaptive substance, creative regeneration: Mainstream science, repression, and creativity
• Library:How do you know? Students, patients, and discovery