Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev

Bekhterev made extensive discoveries in brain morphology and the functional anatomy of the nervous system. His first descriptions of the superior vestibular nucleus (Bekhterev's nucleus), the central tegmental tract, and the connections of the olivary nucleus and cerebellar peduncles remain in neuroanatomy textbooks today. The German anatomist Friedrich Kusch remarked that "there are only two persons who know the anatomy of the brain perfectly — God and Bekhterev." In 1892 he identified ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic inflammatory disease causing progressive rigidity and curvature of the spine, as a distinct nosological entity, and it is still called Bekhterev's disease.

He added a total of fifteen new reflexes and more than ten new symptoms to the neurological examination. The scapulohumeral reflex, wrist-finger reflex, heel reflex, Bekhterev-Mendel reflex, and Bekhterev-Jacobsohn reflex are used to detect pyramidal tract lesions, while the paradoxical pupillary dilation to light (Bekhterev's reflex I) is among the best-known clinical signs bearing his name. As clinical tools he developed 'Bekhterev's mixture', a widely used sedative, and devised 'Bekhterev's psychotherapeutic triad' for treating alcoholism, combining pharmacotherapy, physiotherapy, and hypnosis, which led him to open Russia's first experimental-clinical institute for the study of alcoholism in 1912.

His school produced roughly five thousand pupils, including seventy professors, forty of whom went on to head psychoneurological institutions across the country. Bekhterev's name survives in over twenty medical eponyms encompassing diseases, reflexes, symptoms, nuclei, and tests.

Bekhterev held that all mental activity could be explained through objectively observable reflex responses. Rejecting the subjective psychology of introspection, he championed an objective psychology that measured association reflexes between environmental stimuli and overt behavior. Between 1907 and 1910 he published the three-volume Objective Psychology, laying the foundations of reflexology, and in 1921 he extended this framework to social phenomena in Collective Reflexology. He maintained a lifelong rivalry with Ivan Pavlov over the study of conditioned reflexes: Bekhterev used mild electrical stimulation to measure motor reflexes rather than Pavlov's saliva method, which he criticized as difficult to apply to humans. His reflexology is now recognized as a forerunner of American behaviorism. Bekhterev also emphasized the impact of social conditions on mental health, arguing for the improvement of social environments as a means of reducing crime and promoting psychological well-being.

In 1907 Bekhterev founded the Psychoneurological Institute (Психоневрологический институт) in St. Petersburg, the world's first institution to bring psychology, psychiatry, neurology, pedagogy, and law together under a single roof for research and teaching. Convinced that human beings could not be understood through fragmented specialties, Bekhterev envisioned a comprehensive 'human science' (человековедение) spanning from the anatomy of the nervous system to social behavior. The Institute combined research functions with higher education and opened pedagogical, legal, and medical faculties. In 1916 these faculties were elevated to form the private Petrograd University attached to the Institute.

In 1913, despite government pressure, Bekhterev submitted an expert forensic-medical opinion in the trial of Mendel Beilis, a Jew falsely accused of ritual murder, adhering strictly to the principles of evidence-based medicine and demonstrating the Institute's scholarly independence. After the October Revolution, Bekhterev petitioned the Commissariat of Education for expanded premises and in 1918 secured the eastern wing of the Marble Palace, formerly owned by Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov. When offered one wing he famously demanded both, a scene that captures his audacious character. That same May he obtained Sovnarkom approval to establish a separate Institute for the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity, which he directed until his death. The institution survives today as the V.M. Bekhterev National Medical Research Center for Psychiatry and Neurology, still bearing his name.