Konstantin V. Anokhin

The question of the evolutionary physiology of consciousness may seem strange. However, this question: a) was raised by the author of the evolutionary theory of natural selection, who devoted a significant part of his research after the publication of “The Origin of Species” for attempt to find an answer to it, and b) continues the traditions of Russian evolutionary physiology, expressed in the search for the evolutionary origins of higher nervous activity. However, the main problem of all these pursuits was that for these scientists, the organism in the processes of struggle for existence and natural selection was “physiologically opaque”. Modern neuroscience has largely overcome this obstacle – we can observe what is happening in the nervous system on an organism in the process of its adaptive interactions with the environment. I will examine what it means in relation to the issues that so worried Charles Darwin, L.A. Orbeli and P.K. Anokhin.