[3] Britashvili was born in Tiflis Governorate on 19 December 1884 into the family of a Georgian Orthodox priest in the small village of Vejini in Kakheti, in the Eastern region of Georgia (at that time part of the Russian Empire).

In the same year he enrolled in the Natural Division of the Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of St. Petersburg University and soon attracted the attention of the professors of their abilities and hard work.

Beritashvili studied the problem of reciprocal innervation of skeletal musculature in frogs showing that local strychninization of the dorsal horn did not disrupt the coordination of the “wiping” reflex.

Later, in the spring of 1914, again with Wedensky's support, Beritashvili joined Rudolf Magnus (1873–1927) in Utrecht to study the techniques of mammalian neurosurgery (decebreration, sectioning the dorsal roots, etc.

In 1915 Beritashvili had to leave St. Petersburg and move to Odessa as a Senior Assistant to Prof. V. V. Zavyalov at the Chair of Physiology in the Physical and Mathematical Department of Novorossyisk University.

A number of other fundamental handbooks, General Physiology of the Central Nervous System (1948), the third revised and enlarged edition of 1966, and Structure and Function of the Cerebral Cortex of 1969, were also published in Moscow in Russian.

In 1938 Beritashvili was awarded the Pavlov Prize for important contributions to the study of the peripheral and central nervous systems, and higher brain functions.

In 1962 he was also awarded the Sechenov Prize for his book Neural Mechanisms of Higher Vertebrate Behavior, which, with the support of H. Jasper, was translated from Russian into English and published in Boston (1965).

During his long life Beritashvili was the author of almost 400 research and review papers, many chapters in books, a dozen monographs, and the comprehensive three volume handbook and the two-volume textbook that were republished many times.

On the basis of experiments with local strychninization of the spinal cord in frogs, Beritashvili determined in 1910 that the coordinating apparatus for flexure reflexes is located in the dorsal horn of the segment where the sensory fibers of the corresponding receptive field entered.

It was his first work, 40 years later, with the same experimental design but using the oscilloscope and registration of electrical potentials of the sensory and motor roots, he confirmed the correctness of the principles he had formulated earlier.

In Wedensky's laboratory, and at the same time as Charles S. Sherrington (1857–1952), Beritashvili used the string galvanometer to study the central coordination of spinal reflexes in the registration of action currents of antagonist muscles.

Together with collaborators he showed that this phenomenon, first discovered by Ivan Sechenov in 1863, could be induced by the stimulation of the skin, the sensory and autonomic nerves, the visceral organs, and the surface of the brain.

Before World War II, Beritashvili began an extraordinary line of experimentation that, figuratively, ultimately provided the giant's shoulders on which Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) stood to receive his 1981 Nobel award.

From 1936 to 1940, interrupted by the war and never resumed, Beritashvili with his assistant Nina Chichinadze (1896–1972) performed a series of ingenious experiments, testing the ability of one cerebral hemisphere to search out memories initially laid down in the other.

Possibly consequent to the ensuing war, this paper seems often to have escaped attention, despite its being the foundation for the extensive investigation of interhemispheric mnemonic processes in the last half of the 20th century.

However, unsatisfied with Köhler's few observations, as well as with Pavlov's explanation of them as examples of conditional reflexes, Beritashvili committed himself to testing behavior in freely moving animals—a method that was inherently natural and versatile.

Following such a single exposure, the animal would run directly to that place of food immediately upon entering that same room, even if this occurred several months later.

Human “image-driven” behavior is itself a sufficiently general experience so that a diminished form thereof seems defensibly lucid in describing the equivalent phenomenon among mammals.

On the background of the country's difficult political situation, however, the new lines of research opened up in these works received negative reactions from the Pavlovian school—particularly after the publication of his 1947 book.

Experiments extirpating various cortical regions in dogs and cats demonstrated that the front half of the suprasylvian fissure is responsible for spatial orientation under labyrinthine and auditory stimulation.

However, the optic receptors and vestibular semicircular canals, utricle, and saccule play a most significant part, since their exclusion renders normal orientation in space impossible.

Special spatial orientation studies in the blind showed that the latter judged obstacles in the distance by sensations in the face area, based on cutaneous receptor stimulation resulting from conditional reflex constriction of facial muscles.

His contribution warrant reappraisal, as do these of many other scientist who worked in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern European countries, and who were often vilified and isolated from the international scientific community.

Thus, returning to his early experiments with Rudolf Magnus on the eve of World War I in Utrecht, he performed an extensive analysis of the role of the vestibular system, as opposed to muscular proprioception, in guiding orientation in space.

Labyrinthectomized animals, even after several months of recovery and specific training, were unable to follow a newly given path when vision was absent (due to blindfolds).

Recent work with human subjects passively translocated through space has suggested that cues other than those provided by the otoliths are important for perceiving features of lateral movement.

Using multiple variations of this investigation, Beritashvili studied the mnemonic capabilities of various vertebrates from fish to microcephalic and normal children, the effect of restricted sensory input, and the removal of various portions of the CNS in animals.