ABSTRACT
This chapter is the report made by Pavlov to the Petrograd Society of Biologists in 1915. Pavlov examines in detail two basic questions: the conditions favouring the onset of sleep; and conditions impeding the onset of sleep. In an experimental study, Pavlov shows that a variety of nervous processes is of much greater significance to the active condition of the cerebral hemispheres than is a variety of stimuli, however great it may be. It must be assumed that the aforesaid conditions for the active and resting states of the cerebral hemispheres are the basic or, at any rate, some of the fundamental conditions. A complete analysis of these conditions will probably lead to enormous control over the activity of our cerebral hemispheres and to their extensive practical application.
