Alexander Luria facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alexander Luria
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Luria, c. 1940
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| Born | 16 July 1902 |
| Died | 14 August 1977 (aged 75) Moscow, Soviet Union
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| Nationality | Soviet |
| Alma mater | Kazan State University First Moscow State Medical University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neuropsychology Psychology |
| Notable students | Olga Vinogradova |
| Influences | Lev Vygotsky |
| Influenced | Oliver Sacks Roman Jakobson, Maxie Clarence Maultsby Jr. Ivan Pavlov, Ivan Sechenov |
Alexander Romanovich Luria (Russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Лу́рия; born July 16, 1902 – died August 14, 1977) was a famous Soviet scientist. He is often called one of the founders of modern neuropsychology. This field studies how the brain affects our behavior and thinking.
Luria created many tests to understand how brain injuries affect people. He used these tests with soldiers who were hurt during World War II. Many of his tests are still used today. He also studied how different parts of the brain work together. His most famous book, Higher Cortical Functions in Man (1962), is a key textbook in psychology.
Before the war, Luria was very interested in how culture and development shape our minds. He studied people in Central Asia, like the nomadic Uzbeks. He believed that their way of life affected how they thought and solved problems. He was also a leader in a group of thinkers called the "Vygotsky-Luria Circle." This group explored how culture and language help us develop our thinking skills.
Luria is also known for two amazing case studies. One was about a man named Solomon Shereshevsky, who had an incredible memory. The other was about Lev Zasetsky, a soldier who had a severe brain injury. Luria wrote about their experiences in his books, The Mind of a Mnemonist and The Man with a Shattered World.
Luria worked at many scientific places during his career. In 2002, a survey ranked him as one of the most important psychologists of the 20th century.
Contents
Life and Career
Early Life and Education
Alexander Luria was born in Kazan, a city in Russia. His family had many doctors. His father, Roman Albertovich Luria, was a professor and a therapist. His mother, Evgenia Viktorovna Khaskina, was a dentist. Alexander was one of two children; his younger sister became a psychiatrist.
Luria finished school early and got his first degree in 1921 from Kazan State University. While he was still a student, he started a group interested in psychoanalysis. In 1923, he moved to Moscow. There, he got a job at the Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology.
Meeting Lev Vygotsky
In 1924, Luria met Lev Vygotsky, who became a very important influence on him. Together, they started what is now known as "Cultural-Historical Psychology." This idea suggests that our culture and language play a huge role in how our minds develop. They believed that tools, especially language, help us learn and think.
Luria also created a clever method called the "combined motor method." This helped him find hidden emotions and thoughts in people. His research on this was published in the US in 1932. It made him famous around the world.
In the early 1930s, Luria and Vygotsky both started studying medicine. After Vygotsky passed away in 1934, Luria finished his medical degree.
Studies on Culture and the Brain
The 1930s were important for Luria because he started studying different cultures. He went on trips to Central Asia to see how cultural changes affected people's thinking, memory, and problem-solving skills. He looked at how learning to read and write changed the way people thought.
In 1937, Luria earned his medical degree with high honors. He also got a doctorate in pedagogical sciences. He was one of the youngest psychology professors in the country at 34. In 1933, Luria married Lana P. Lipchina, a scientist who studied microbiology. They had one daughter, Lena.
Luria also studied identical and fraternal twins. He wanted to understand how both genes and culture affect human development. Later, he focused on studying aphasia, which is when people have trouble with language after a brain injury. He looked at how language, thought, and brain functions are connected.
World War II and Its Impact
World War II, which ended in 1945, greatly shaped Luria's career in neuropsychology. He became a Doctor of Medical Sciences in 1943 and a Professor in 1944. The government asked him to help almost 800 soldiers who had suffered brain injuries during the war.
Luria developed many ways to help these patients with their emotional and thinking problems. He carefully wrote down everything about them. He found three ways the brain could recover:
- A temporarily blocked function could restart.
- The other side of the brain could take over some tasks.
- The brain could reorganize how it performs functions.
He wrote about these findings in his books, including Traumatic Aphasia (1947). This book presented new ideas about how speech is organized in the brain and what happens when it's damaged. After the war, Luria got a permanent job at Moscow State University. He helped create the Faculty of Psychology there.
Research in the 1950s
After the war, Luria continued his work in Moscow. For a while, he focused on studying children with intellectual disabilities. This is where he did some of his most important research on child psychology. He also moved away from the ideas of Ivan Pavlov, who focused on simple conditioned reflexes.
Luria was very interested in how speech helps us control our behavior. He wrote a book in 1957 called The Role of Speech in the Regulation of Normal and Abnormal Behavior. In this book, he explained three main points:
- How speech helps mental processes develop.
- How speech learns to control our actions.
- How brain problems can change speech's controlling role.
Luria's work in child psychology during the 1950s showed how children with difficulties struggled to form connections and use speech to help themselves. He also looked at how brain processes differ in language and movement systems. He identified three stages of language development in children, showing how speech helps us perform actions on purpose.
Cold War Era and New Books
In the 1960s, Luria's career grew even more. His book Higher Cortical Functions in Man and Their Impairment Caused by Local Brain Damage was published in 1962. This book was translated into many languages and helped establish neuropsychology as a real medical field. Luria's presence at international meetings also brought a lot of attention to his research.
He wrote or co-authored other books during this time, including Higher Brain and Mental Processes (1963). He also studied memory problems, looking at long-term, short-term, and semantic memory. He wanted to tell the difference between memory problems caused by brain damage and problems with thinking processes.
Later Writings
Luria continued to write many important books in the 1970s. In 1973, he published The Working Brain. This book summarized his theory that the brain works through three main systems:
- The system for paying attention and processing senses.
- The system for memory and planning.
- The system for keeping the brain active and energized.
These two books, Higher Cortical Functions in Man and The Working Brain, are considered his most important works in neuropsychology.
Luria also wrote two popular books for a general audience. These books shared some of his amazing case studies:
- The Mind of a Mnemonist (1968): This book was about Solomon Shereshevsky, a Russian journalist with an almost perfect memory. He could remember everything because he had a condition called synesthesia, where his senses got mixed up (e.g., he could "see" sounds).
- The Man with the Shattered World (1971): This book told the story of Lev Zasetsky, a soldier who recovered from a severe brain injury during World War II with Luria's help.
Luria's last book, Language and Cognition, was published after he passed away in 1980. He died on August 14, 1977, from a heart attack.
Main Areas of Research
Luria's research focused on six main areas throughout his life:
- How society and history shape the human mind.
- How biology and genes affect the human mind.
- How signs and symbols, especially language, help us develop higher thinking skills.
- How psychological functions and consciousness are organized in the brain.
- How the brain works with the mind (linking psychology and physiology).
- How theory and practical work are connected.
Principal Research Trends
Luria's work led to new research in several areas:
Linguistic Aphasia
Luria's theory of language looked at the steps involved in speaking and understanding. He showed how our inner thoughts turn into spoken words. He also explained how we understand spoken words and turn them back into inner thoughts.
Frontal Lobes
Luria studied the frontal lobes of the brain. These parts are important for:
- Attention
- Memory
- Thinking
- Emotions
- Voluntary movements
His books like The Frontal Lobes (1966) explored these functions.
Speech Dysfunction
Luria's research on speech problems focused on:
- Expressive speech (how we speak)
- Impressive speech (how we understand speech)
- Memory
- Thinking
- Personality
Child Neuropsychology
Luria's experiences during the war helped create the field of child neuropsychology. He found that brain damage in children affects their psychological functions differently than in adults. His colleagues studied how damage to the left and right sides of the brain caused different problems in children. Luria's work also helped develop ways to help children recover from speech problems.
Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Test
The Luria-Nebraska is a well-known test used to check brain function. It is based on Luria's ideas about how the brain works. Luria himself was not directly involved in creating this specific test, but it uses his important research as its foundation.
Books
- The Nature of Human Conflicts - or Emotion, Conflict, and Will: An Objective Study of Disorganisation and Control of Human Behaviour. New York: Liveright Publishers, 1932.
- Higher Cortical Functions in Man. Moscow University Press, 1962.
Summary at BrainInfo
- (With Solotaroff, Lynn) The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound, Harvard University Press, 1987. ISBN: 0-674-54625-3.
In Cinema
- Paolo Rosa's film Il mnemonista (2000) is based on Luria's book The Mind of a Mnemonist.
- Chris Doyle's film Away with Words was inspired by Luria's The Mind of a Mnemonist.
- Jacqueline Goss's short film How to Fix the World (2004) is a fun parody. It uses Luria's studies on how learning to read changed the thinking of people in Central Asia. The full film is viewable at Vimeo.
See Also
In Spanish: Aleksandr Lúriya para niños
- Cultural-historical psychology
- Elkhonon Goldberg
- Lev Vygotsky
- Solomon Shereshevsky
Images for kids
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Luria, around 1940
