The paper deals with Academician V. A. Negovsky’s views of the significance of the central nervous system in the formation of postresuscitative pathology and with the development of this problem at the present time. It also gives Academician V. A. Negovsky’s statements on the most important matters of reanimatology. The authors present the current studies of V. A. Negovsky’s disciples, the researchers of the Institute founded by him, which deal with the regularities of and the mechanisms responsible for the development of posthypoxic encephalopathies. Under discussion are the problems associated with the time course of changes in the postresuscitative process, the impact of the duration of a terminal condition on brain damage, the significance of structure-function relationships, the selective vulnerability of different regions of the central nervous system, the role of the body’s individual and typological characteristics, as well as the methodological approaches to preventing and treating brain dysfunction. Key words: V. A. Negovsky, postresuscitative brain pathology, neuromorphology, regularities and mechanisms of the development of posthypoxic encephalopathies.