Roitbak, Aleksandr Ilich

Roitbak, Aleksandr Il’ich 

Born Feb. 17, 1919, in Odessa. Soviet physiologist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968).

Roitbak graduated from the Kiev Medical Institute in 1941. He was a student of I. S. Beritashvili. In 1944 he joined the staff of the Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR; in 1960 he became head of the Laboratory of General Cerebral-Cortex Physiology. Roitbak’s principal works deal with neurophysiology. Roitbak discovered that by rhythmically stimulating the cortex of the large hemispheres with electricity it is possible to create a focus of excitation, or a dominant. He has proposed a hypothesis on the role of neuroglia in the formation of the temporary connections that are the basis of conditioned reflexes.

WORKS

Bioelektricheskie iavleniia ν kore bol’shikh polusharii, part 1. Tbilisi, 1955.
“Neirogliia i obrazovanie novykh nervnykh sviazei ν kore mozga.” In Mekhanizmy formirovaniia i tormozheniia uslovnykh refleksov. Moscow, 1973.