Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences originates from the Physiological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which was founded in 1925 on the base of the Physiological Laboratory.

The first Director of the Institute of Physiology until 1936 was an outstanding scientist, the first Nobel Prize winner in theoretical medicine, Academician Ivan P. Pavlov. The main goal of the Institute was to study physiology of brain hemispheres by the method of conditional reflexes. By the early 1930s, the main problem investigated at the Institute included regularities of the activity of brain hemispheres, interactions of the excitation and inhibition processes, types of the nervous system, experimental neuroses as well as the higher nervous activity of primates. In 1934, new Departments were founded (Anatomy, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Experimental Psychology) and the ground was provided for detailed studies on the structural and physico-chemical basis of physiology and psychology of theanimal and human brain. Initiated by Pavlov, neurogenetical investigations began.

In 1936, after Pavlov’s death, the Physiological Institute was awarded his name. The Institute was headed by his associate, Academician Leon A. Orbeli. Under Orbeli’s guidance, in 1936–1950, the higher nervous activity physiology was added by evolutionary, comparative and age physiology as well as physiology of the autonomous nervous system and of sense organs. Studies on cell biochemistry and cell biophysics developed.

During the Second World War, researchers of the Institute were involved in solving military time applied problems, including treatment of consequences of traumas of the central and peripheral nervous system and mechanisms of adaptation to hypoxia.

In continuing creatively the Ivan Pavlov’s scientific inheritance of the higher nervous activity, the Institute has become, by the late 1940s, one of the centers of development of evolutionary physiology, sensory system physiology, concept of the second signal system, husbandry physiology.