Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, located at 6 Makarova Embankment, is a scientific research institution and a coordinating centre for research into animal and human physiology. It was established in 1925 as the Physiological Institute on the initiative of I. P. Pavlov (the first director) on basis of the Physiological Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences established in 1864 by academician V. F. Ovsyannikov. The institute mainly researched the problems of higher nervous activity during the first years of its existence. It was renamed the Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Higher Nervous Activity in 1934. In 1936, it was united with the Laboratory of Animal Physiology in Moscow, becoming the I. P. Pavlov Physiological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR headed by L. A. Orbeli in 1936-50. During the years of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, the institute conducted research, which was important for the war effort (the effects of insufficient oxygen on the human body as well as blast waves from explosions etc.). The institute received its present-day name in 1950 as a result of uniting with the Institute of Physiology of the Central Nervous System and the Academician I. P. Pavlov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Pathology of Nervous Activity. By the beginning of the 1960s, research in the sphere of evolutional physiology was recommenced at the Institute of Physiology and the institute started to develop research into the problems of physiology of separate visceral systems and ecological physiology. A section of cosmic biology and physiology was formed in 1961. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the institute has been developing research into the problems of physiology of perception and comprehension of information, physiology of blood circulation, breathing, digestive and endocrine systems, neurohumoral regulation of visceral systems.