Neuropsychologia, 1965, Vol. 3, pp. 387 to 392. Pergamon Press Ltd.

Printed in England

L. S. V Y G O T S K Y A N D THE P R O B L E M OF
L O C A L I Z A T I O N OF F U N C T I O N S *
A. R. LURIA
(Received 14 April 1965)

Abstract--The investigation of the development of higher psychological functions, their

changes in conditions of injuries, and their disintegration under brain damage, carried out by
L. S. Vygotsky already in the twenties, laid the basis of a new discipline--Neuropsychology.
His last work, published posthumously--Psychology and the Localization of Functions-forming a summary of that report which he was not fated to read, was the just and fullest
program of investigation of the functional organization of the human brain--the organ of
human consciousness. This is the great scientific contribution of that distinguished-L. S. Vygotsky.
FORTY years ago, in the mid-twenties, a young Soviet psychologist--he was only 30 years
o l d - - L . S. VYGOTSKY began his visits to a neurological hospital, in the beginning as an
observer and after that as an independent investigator.
In contrast to m a n y others--including the head of this clinic, Professor G. I. Rossolimo
- - h e did not come to apply already known tests for improving diagnosis of brain injuries.
His task was incomparably wider: in the analysis of local brain damage he saw one of the
basic ways of the analysis of the most important structure of psychological processes and a
possible approach to the material substrata of complex psychic activity. "It seems to me that
the problem of localization, as a general rule includes all that is connected with the study of
higher psychological functions and with the study of their disintegration" he wrote after a
few years in a report he completed only six weeks before his death.
L. S. VYGOTSKY arrived at the problem of localization of psychological functions with a
carefully new position which from the very first was opposed to the basic ideas of the contemporary psychology and neurology.
In the psychology o f the twenties there indisputably dominated the idea that the psychic
life of m a n was examined as a complex of functions or qualities basically c o m m o n to man
and animals. Sensations and perceptions, attention and memory, judgment and inference,
emotions and voluntary actions were considered by the leading psychologists of the time
as natural forms o f operation of the nervous system, in the best case, as processes having a
reflex structure, the mechanisms o f which were carefully studied in the conditioned reflex
activity o f animals. This time was very close to that period when the dualistic viewpoint
dominated in psychology and when the question as to whether psychic phenomena flow
parallel to physiological ones or interact with them was a central question of psychology.
Therefore the naturalistic approach to psychological phenomena, serving in equal degree
as the starting point for German Gestalt psychology and American behaviorism, was not
only justified but attracted the most progressive circles of psychological science.
It is natural, however, that while successfully solving a series of important problems
about the mechanisms of elementary psychological process (sensations and simple forms of
* Translated by HERBERTPICK.
387

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A.R. Ltraia

perception, involuntary attention and direct memory) the naturalist psychologists were not
able to attack problems which lay at the basis of specifically human higher psychological
functions. How is it possible to understand the mechanism of voluntary behavior? What
do the methods of operations characteristic of voluntary attention and active memory
consist of? How is it possible to approach the scientific analysis of abstract forms of
thinking which permit man to penetrate the deepest laws of reality and which give him
freedom? At that time only the idealistic "descriptive psychology", understood as the
"science of the soul" (Geisteswissenschaftsliche Psychologie) attempted to answer these
questions, rejecting the possibility of their causal scientific analysis.
The initial position of the young soviet psychologist was basically different from the
above formulated views.
The higher psychological functions, the study of which was rejected by the naturalistic
science, he said, not only should remain an object of causal analysis, but their study
should become the basic task of scientific psychology; to preserve the natural scientific
approach by means of a refusal to study these functions would mean stopping the progress
of science, directing the development along false paths. Just as unacceptable, however, was
the position of spiritualistic psychologists: to preserve the question of the higher forms of
consciousness and will, but reject the scientific analysis of their origin would be substituting
a fideistic philosophy for science.
L. S. Vygotsky saw a way out of the "historical crisis" of psychological science* in a
basic re-examination of the fundamental concepts of psychology. The "higher psychological
functions" ought to have their own origin, but this origin should not be sought in the depths
of the soul or in the hidden properties of nervous tissue; it should be sought outside the
organism of the individual person, in objectively existing social history which is independent
of the individual. Uniting in society and using tools, man creates new indirect forms of
relation to the external world to which he was earlier adapted and which he later masters.
Forming language in the process of social history, he obtains not only new, hitherto unknown, means of intercourse, but together with this a new tool for the organization of his
own specific psychological processes. Developing on the basis of social work and speech the
higher psychic functions permit man to shift to a new level of organization of his own
activity; applying to himself those means which were created in the process of verbal
intercourse with surrounding persons, he forms those types of cognitive perceptions,
voluntary attention, active memory, abstract thoughts and volative behavior which never
existed in the animal world and which in no manner represents initial characteristics of the
"soul".
The approach to the psychological life of man from these positions involved a basic
reconstruction of all the underlying divisions of psychological science. Perception and
memory, imagination and thinking, emotional experience, and volative activity ceased to
be examined as natural functions of nervous tissue or as simple "qualities" of psychic life.
It became apparent that they have a more complex structure, that this complex structure has
its own social-historical origin and it acquired new, specifically human, functional properties. Speech activity ceased to be evaluated as a partial process not having a direct
relation to perception and attention, memory and thinking. There occurred a real possibility of scientifically explaining those processes of abstract thinking and voluntary actions,
which for centuries had remained unexplained. Those phenomena that were studied earlier
* For analysis of this crisis he conducted a special investigation, which unfortunately was left unpublished.

L. S. VYGOTSKY AND THE PROBLEM OF LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTIONS

389

as isolated "functions" or even as inreductible "properties" appeared now as more complex

functional systems, formed in history and changing in the process of ontogenetic development. Forming his behavior in association with adults, reconstructing it on the basis of
using objects and speech, mastering knowledge, the child not only acquires new forms of
relations to the external world, but even develops new means of regulation of his own
behavior; he forms new functional systems permitting him to master new forms of perception and memory, new forms of thinking, new means of organization of voluntary acts.
It is easy to see what sort of a revolution the ideas of L. S. Vygotsky introduced into
the centuries-old psychological concepts. The stable and unchanging "psychic functions"
were now conceived as complex, dynamic functional systems, changing in the process of
development; psychology having gone beyond the first narrow naturalistic borders became
a science of the social formation ofnaturalphenomena.
One, and I dare say, a most essential problem remained open, however. I f the ideas of
L. S. Vygotsky, for many decades determining the development of Soviet psychology,
essentially changed our views of the nature and structure of psychological processes how
should their material substrate be conceptualized ? What concepts of the operation of the
brain are necessary for founding our views on a natural basis of psychic activity ?
The problem of localization of psychological functions in the cortex--and this was how
the question of the neural basis of psychic activity was formulated--survived in the twenties
a profound crisis, in many ways reflecting the crisis of psychological science. On the one
side in neurology there still were preserved those naive ideas about the localization of
complex psychic functions in limited parts of the cortex. This idea of "localization" was
suggested by the great discoveries of the 1870s. Having arisen from simplified ideas about
psychological "functions" which dominated in the contemporary psychology, the neurologists made the suggestion that along with cortical centers of sensation and movement there
might be found analogous centers of more complex psychic processes. And after the work
of Lissauer, Henchen, and Kleist the idea of the presence in the cortex of "centers of
ideas", "calculating centers", "conceptual centers" ceased to seem so strange.
It is natural, however, that the position of "strict localization" also met substantial
doubt. Understanding the whole complexity of higher psychic processes of man, and discounting that well known clinical fact, that the destruction of these processes may occur
as a result of very differently localized destruction, many neurologists proposed the hypothesis, that the complex forms of psychic processes are a result of activity of the entire brain
as a whole. Some of these authors (Monakov and Grfinbaum) subjected to the noticeable
influence of the Wiirzburg school of psychology, refrained from all attempts to approach
more closely those apparati of the brain which were connected with the higher forms of
psychic activity. Others--attracted by the ideas of Gestalt psychology (K. Goldstein)-attempted to create the idea of the stream of excitation, spread out equally through the
whole cortex, and to see in those unlocalized "structural" processes the basis of the complex forms of the psychic activity of man. Recognizing the narrow localization of elementary physiological processes in limited regions of the cortex, they practically refused to
analyse concretely those cortical zones which took part in the realization of complex forms
of m a n ' s psychic activity. "Returning to the vicious circle of structural psychology" wrote
L. S. Vygotsky, "the study of localization of the specifically human functions wavered
between the poles of extreme materialism and extreme spiritualism".*
* L. S. Vygotsky, Development of Higher Psychic Functions.Publishing House of the Academy of
Pedagogical Sciences, Moscow, 1960, p. 386.

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A.R. LURIA

Those ideas about higher psychological functions, social in their origin, systemic in
their structure, dynamic in their development, from which L. S. Vygotsky started, naturally
could not be fitted into the scheme described above and needed new basically reconstructed
approaches to their brain localization.
The fact that not one of the high psychological functions could be understood as a
simple "feature" of psychic life, prevented from the very beginning the thoughts that
higher psychological processes are represented in the cortex just like the simple physiological
"functions"; however those concrete conceptions about their complex differentiated form
of psychological functions eliminated the idea that the brain lies as an undifferentiated whole
as their basis. The conception at which L. S. Vygotsky arrived caused him to think that
"localization of higher psychological functions cannot be understood as anything other
than chronogenetic, that it is as the result of psychological development", that relations
which are characteristic for separate parts of the brain, accomplishing the higher psychological functions, are formed in the process of development and that the "human brain
possesses new localization principles in comparison with the animal brain".T However,
the elucidation of this position required an incomparably more complete and more concrete
analysis of the functional organization of the psychic processes of man, without which
any attempt to solve the problem of their localization would be left impossible.
Already in his early investigations++, L. S. Vygotsky paid attention to the fact that the
mental development of the child doesn't carry the character of a simple maturation of
inborn traits, that it occurs in the process of dealing with external objects and intercourse
with adults. The child masters the tools which have been accumulated in the history of man
and arrives at the use of external means of signs for the organization of his own specific
behavior. If reactions of an animal are evoked by stimuli which arise in the external or
internal environment, the actions of the child very soon begin to be guided by those signals
which he himself creates and to which he is subjected. The direction of the attention of a
child by his own verbal signals or the organization of his activity with the help of the
regulating role of his external and after that internal speech may be examples of such
mediated organization of his psychic processes. Only gradually is this open activity,
depending on external means, diminished, does it aquire an abbreviated character, and is it
transformed into those processes which may appear as simple and further indivisible
"psychological functions", but which are actually the product of a complex historical
development.
It is natural that such a mediated "instrumental" character of behavior, specific for
man and not taking place in animals necessitates the proposition of a new principle of
localization of higher psychic processes differing from those forms of brain organization
of behavior which take place in animals. Namely this required L. S. Vygotsky to speak
of that role played by "extra-cerebral connection"* in the localization of functions connected
with specifically human areas of the brain, these extra-cerebral connections, built up in the
activity of man, in the use of instruments and external signs, and so important in the formation of higher psychological functions. The praxis of man is impossible to imagine without
his manipulating objects, and verbal thought, without language and its external meansphonemes, letters, logical-grammatical relations, created in the process of social history.
t L. S. Vygotsky, Development of Higher Psychic Functions. Publishing House of the Academy of
Pedagogical Sciences, Moscow, 1960, p. 387.
+ L. S. Vygotsky, Selected Psychological Investigations. Publishing House of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, Moscow, 1956 and "Development of Psychological Fnnctions", Moscow, 1960. (Russian).
* L, S. Vygotsky. Development of Higher Psychological Functions, p. 391.

L. S. V Y G O T S K Y A N D T H E P R O B L E M OF L O C A L I Z A T I O N O F F U N C T I O N S

391

Social history ties those knots which form definite cortical zones in new relations with
each other, and if the use of language with its phonematic codes evokes new functional
relations between the temporal (auditory) and kinesthetic (sensorimotor) areas of the
cortex, then this is a product of historical development, depending on "extra-cerebral ties"
and new "functional organs" formed in the cortex.t
The fact, that in the process of historical development in man there arise new functions,
doesn't signify, however, that each of them depends on a new group of nerve cells and that
these new "centers" of higher psychic function are similar to those which were sought by
the neurologists in the last third of the 19th century. The fact that history ties new functional knots in the cortex indicates that the development of new "functional organs" occurs
by means of the formation of new functional systems, which never took place in animals,
the creation of which is a new means of unlimited development of the brain. The human
cortex becomes thanks to this principle the organ of civilization, containing in itself
unlimited possibilities and not demanding creation of new morphological apparatus every
time a demand is created in history for a new function.
The study of the system of localization of higher psychological functions in the cortex
takes, by such means, overcomes the ideas of narrow localization and the conceptualization
of the brain as a unitary whole. Every specific function ceases to be thought of us a product
of some kind of center, on the other hand the function of the brain as a whole ceases to be
conceived of as the work of a homogeneous mass of nervous tissue. In the place of both
these conceptions there is the position of a system o f h ~ h l y differentiated zones of the cortex
working together, accomplishing new tasks by means of new "inter-areal" relations.
These ideas proposed by L. S. Vygotsky, lay at the basis of the study of systemic or
dynamic localization of function, which now--thirty years after the death of the a u t h o r - have been strongly consolidated in contemporary science.*
There is, however, still one side of L. S. Vygotsky's study of the systemic localization
of psychological processes. It has been left up to now as the prevision of a genius and its
fulfilment in a series of concrete investigations is still a task for the future. The matter
concerns the dynamic change of the correlation of brain "centres" in the process of development and disintegration, opening new perspectives for a factual study of "chronogenetic
localization" of function in the cortex. In neurology the problem has never been framed to
the effect that the very same functions may, at different stages of development, be accomplished by different parts of the cortex and that the interrelations of the separate cortical
zones at various stages of development may not be equal. The careful study of the paths of
development of higher psychic functions in ontogenesis led L. S. Vygotsky to such a
position--completely new for neurology.
Investigating the early stages of ontogenesis, L. S. Vygotsky indicated that in the first
stages the formation of higher psychological functions depends on the presence of more
elementary processes, serving as a foundation. Complex concepts can not be developed, if
there are not sufficient stable sensory percepts and ideas; voluntary memory can not be
built up if at its base doesn't lie stable processes of direct memory. However, in the later
stages of mental development the relation of elementary and complex mental processes is
changed. The higher psychological functions, built up on the basis of elementary psychological processes, begin to influence their basis, and even the most simple forms of mental
t Cf. A. N. Leont6v. Problems of Mental Development. Publishing house of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, Moscow, 1959.
* Cf. A. R. Luria, Higher Cortical Functions in Man. N.Y. Basic Books, 1965.

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A.R. LURIA

activity are reconstructed under the influence o f higher forms o f psychic activity; it is
sufficient to recall the role played by the categorical names o f colors in their perception,
in order to see the d e p t h o f this process.
These d a t a led L. S. Vygotsky to assume that the relation o f separate cortical zones is
changed in the process o f development, a n d if in the beginning the f o r m a t i o n o f " h i g h e r "
centers d e p e n d s on the m a t u r i t y o f the " l o w e r " , then in the complicating o f b e h a v i o r the
" h i g h e r " centers organize the w o r k o f the lower a n d subject t h e m to their own influence.
This reverse correlation of parts o f the cortex at various stages o f d e v e l o p m e n t leads, in the
m i n d o f L. S. Vygotsky to the fact that destruction of one and the same area o f the cortex
may result at different stages in sharply differing syndromes. I f in the early stages o f mental
d e v e l o p m e n t destruction o f specific zones o f the cortex leads to u n d e r d e v e l o p m e n t of
higher parts constructed on their basis, then destruction o f these same zones at a m a t u r e
age evokes a failure o f lower systems depending on them. These suggestions m a k e comprehensible the fact that destruction o f gnostic zones of the cortex in early c h i l d h o o d lead to
general psychic underdevelopment, while at the same time in an a d u l t it evokes p h e n o m e n a
o f agnosia, which have a partial character a n d m a y be within k n o w n limits c o m p e n s a t e d for
by the r e m a i n i n g higher systems o f the cortex.
The suggestions a b o u t a change o f inter-areal relations in successive stages o f o n t o genesis opens new perspectives for the study o f localization o f psychological functions,
a n d it can be assured that the following generation o f investigators can evaluate according
to its merit this genial insight.

R6sum~-Les recherches telles qu'elles ont 6t6 entreprises par L. S. VYGOTSKYdans les annees
1920, sur le d6veloppement des fonctions psychologiques sup6rieures, sur leurs modifications
et sur leurs d6sint6grations lors des atteintes c6r6brales constituent la base d'une nouvelle
discipline: la neuropsychologie.
Le dernier travail publi6 apr6s sa mort "Psychologie et localisation des fonctions" constituant un r6sum6 du rapport qu'il n'6tait pas destin6 ~ pr6senter lui-m6me, representait le
programme le plus complet et le plus juste des investigations sur rorganisation fonctionnel|e
du cerveau humain, c'est /t dire, l'organe de la conscience humaine. C'est la grande contribution scientifique de cet 6minent chercheur, le Professeur L. S. VYGOTSKY.

Zusammenfassung--Vom Jahre 1926 durchforschte L. S. VYGOTSKYdas Gebjet des Aufbaues

h6herer seelischer Funktionen, ihre Veriinderungen durch Traumen und der lokalen Lasionen
des Gehirns. Mit seinem Werk hat er einen Grundstein fiir die neue Forschungsrichtung-Neuropsychologie--gelegt. Seine letzte posthum publizierte Arbeit war "Psychologie und
Lokalisation von psychischen Funktionen" betitelt. Ihre Kurzzusammenfassung war zugleich
das Resum6 eines Referates, das ihm nicht mehr zu halten vergiSnnt war. In ihm findet sich das
gr~Ssstangelegteste und detailliertests Forschungsprogramm for die Aufkliirung der funktionellen Gliederung des Menschenkirnes, der k~Srperlichen Grundlage menschlicher Geistigkeit.