Neuroplasticity is one of the discoveries of our time. The fact that our brain is not fixed but changes as we age and is able to learn new things everyday is a concept that is not very old, but has its root in the psychological research from the end of the 19th to the 20thcentury. Many scientist have devoted their lives to finding answer to questions of how our mind works and how we are able to form language. The Psychologists of the Soviet Union contributed a solid foundation from which we can still draw new conclusions today. One group of scientists is especially mentionable. Forming around the person and ideas of Lev Vygotsky and bringing new research methods and ideas into their field of study. By slightly deterring from the path Pavlov has set, through his idea of reflexology, seeing human behavior only as a chain of reflexes, they in contrast saw the human being and his brain as a product of his biology, environment and his actions. One famous example of this group of scientists is Alexandr Lurija.
Alexandr Lurija spent most of his life studying not only the development of children and their early language development, but also already developed brains that have encountered a form of brain catastrophe, that took away part of their brain functions. Examining their recovery, he could make meaningful assumptions about how our brain works and how information, especially language is processed in the brain. In regarding the behavior of people with abnormal and injured brains, over his lifetime, he drew conclusions of how our brain organizes itself. These ideas formed a lasting impression on how we define the term human today. But even Lurija could not entwine himself from the influence of the Soviet Union, just as his research predicts, his environment entwined with his work.
The October revolution, tending to the brain injured from the Second World War as well as his close proximity to his patients formed his research and his person and made his work a complex, multilayered and very influential today. These intricate connections can be examined and seen as a metaphor to his results .