Georgii Zeliony

Georgii Pavlovich Zeliony (Гео́ргий Па́влович Зелёный; 1878 in Odessa – 1951) was a Russian physiologist who contributed to the understanding of conditional and unconditional reflexes. He was one of I. P. Pavlov's first students. His studies of decorticated dogs led to knowledge of brain function in man and other animals. In addition, he was the first to articulate the theoretical underpinnings of sociophysiology. Beginning around 1905, Zeliony, along with colleagues in Pavlov’s laboratory, performed experiments on dogs (Zeliony 1906b: 80; Delabarre 1910: 85-86; Warden 1928: 507): Experiments conducted by M. Pawlow and his pupils add confirmation to the view that “all physiological phenomena may be completely studied as if psychical phenomena had no existence.” Direct excitation of the mouth cavity of a dog produces an “unconditional” reflex secretion of the saliva. In case the exciting substance is something the dog eats, the secretion is thick; if it be one that the dog refuses, the secretion is more liquid. Any other excitant, acting on any sense whatever (or any combination of excitants), may provoke a “conditional” reflex secretion of either kind, provided it has previously acted on the animal conjointly with another excitant which has produced an unconditional reflex. The conditional reflexes are very instable and variable. But the exact conditions of their origin, their force and their disappearance can be stated in physiological terms. The so-called psychical excitants are identical with these conditional reflexes (Delabarre 1910: 85–86). Pavlov, in his eighth lecture on conditioned reflexes, describes one of Zeliony's experiments: A conditioned alimentary reflex was established to the simultaneous application of the tone of a pneumatic tuning-fork, which was considerably damped by being placed within a wooden box coated with wool, and of a visual stimulus of three electric lamps placed in front of the dog in the slightly shaded room (Pavlov 1927: 142–143 [Lecture VIII]).