★ From Academician Pavel Simonov – Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, recipient of the RAS Gold Medal, Honorary Professor of Moscow State University, leading researcher of higher brain functions, and Chair of the RAS “Classics of Science” editorial board.
★ Simonov’s field is the psychophysiology and neurophysiology of motivation and emotion. Bridging psychology and neuroscience, he elucidated the neural mechanisms of motivation, emotion and behaviour, supplying natural-science foundations for such basic psychological concepts as need, emotion, will and consciousness. His work laid the groundwork for interdisciplinary human-behaviour research; he is regarded as one of the most important psychologists of the 20th century.
★ This book offers a systematic account of the neural mechanisms of emotion and their role in behaviour, summarising several decades of the author’s theoretical and experimental studies.
★ Simonov demonstrates that emotion is inseparable from the brain’s higher nervous activity. Emotion is not only a psychological phenomenon but also a reflection of physiological states, intimately linked to an individual’s needs and motives.
★ He analyses how emotion influences behaviour and decision-making, arguing that emotion permeates the entire chain of brain activity – from perception through reaction to reinforcement. Emotion, he shows, is an evolutionary mechanism for rapid adjustment to environmental change and is therefore crucial for survival and adaptation.
★ Written at the intersection of neuroscience and psychology, the book provides a natural-science basis for understanding emotion and constitutes a landmark work for both fields.

Simonov’s classic is devoted to the physiology of higher nervous activity – the cerebral basis of behaviour. He created and experimentally validated the need-informational method for analysing human and animal behaviour and higher mental functions, making it possible to give natural-scientific grounding to such fundamental psychological concepts as need, emotion, will and consciousness.

In The Emotional Brain Simonov analyses the neurophysiological, neuroanatomical and psychological aspects of emotion research. Emotion is presented as the brain’s evaluative process of internal and external information, expressed in subjective experience. The book reveals the decisive role of emotion in behavioural choices and describes its impact on the subject’s heart rate, activity, speech and facial expression.

Without classifying emotions according to the needs that generate them and the volitional processes inseparable from them, the study of emotional reactions is impossible. All of this deepens our knowledge of human anatomy, psychology and the workings of the nervous system.

The book is fundamentally interdisciplinary, uniting neurophysiology, neuroanatomy and psychology. It is also one of the boldest steps yet toward strong artificial intelligence: Simonov is considered the scientist who came closest to a theoretical solution of the problem of human intelligence, and many of his ideas await algorithmic realisation.

Pavel Vasilievich Simonov (1926–2002)
Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Professor of Moscow State University, distinguished psychologist, biologist, neuroscientist, M.D., Chair of the RAS “Classics of Science” editorial board.

Simonov revealed the neural foundations of mental activity and provided a theoretical basis for interdisciplinary research. His death on 6 June 2002 did not halt his influence: his theories and data continue to shape the scientific community and to advance psychology, neuroscience and the behavioural sciences.

Principal achievements
• Formulated and experimentally confirmed the Need-Information Theory for analysing human and animal behaviour and higher mental functions.
• Proposed a physiological theory of emotion as the brain’s reflection of current needs and their probability of satisfaction.
• Investigated the brain’s creative activity, viewing creativity as the unconscious re-combination of experience driven by dominant needs.

Biographical milestones
Born in Leningrad as Pavel Stanislavovich Stankevich; adopted after his father, an officer, was repressed in 1937, by the sculptor Vasily Lvovich Simonov. Entered flight school in 1944; transferred for health reasons to the Leningrad Military Medical Academy, graduating in 1951. Worked at the Burdenko Central Military Hospital, then as senior researcher at the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1962 at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity & Neurophysiology of the RAS, becoming director in 1982. Elected corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1987, full member in 1991. Professor at Moscow State University from 1996. Member of the Russian State Prize Committee and of the RAS Commission for Combating Pseudoscience. Editor-in-chief of the journal “Pavlov Journal of Higher Nervous Activity”, member of the editorial boards of “Science & Life” and “Russian Science”, member of the IBRO Executive Committee (1985-1997), Academician of the International Academy of Astronautics, member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the US Aerospace Medical Association, honorary member of the US Pavlovian Society.

Awards
Order of the Badge of Honour (1981), Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1986), Order “For Merit to the Fatherland” IV class (1996), medals marking the 30th and 15th anniversaries of the Soviet Army, Medal “For Distinguished Labour”, Lomonosov Gold Medal of the RAS (1999), USSR State Prize (1987) for methods of diagnosing and predicting the state of the human brain, I. M. Sechenov Gold Medal of the RAS (1999), title of Honorary Professor of Moscow State University (1999).