The history of the Laboratory of Sensory Systems of Vertebrates began in 1967. At that time, in the late 1960s, research began in the USSR on a completely new and, for that period, poorly studied group of mammals — dolphins. The work was carried out at a research center specially established for this purpose at the first dolphinarium in Sevastopol. One of the founders and organizers of this center was Academician Vladimir Evgenyevich Sokolov, director of the Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Ecology of Animals (IEMEZh RAS) (now the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS). He invited a neurophysiologist from the Department of Higher Nervous Activity at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Alexander Yakovlevich Supin, to head the group studying marine mammals.
In the early 1970s, scientists of IEMEZh RAS established a research center for fundamental research unrelated to military subjects on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, first near the village of Bolshoy Utrish, and later at Maly Utrish, where the Institute's Utrish Marine Station was founded and still operates today. A.Ya. Supin's group took the most active part in establishing and organizing the station. Later, Lev Mukharamovich Mukhametov, who remains the station's scientific curator to this day, took on all its organizational and technical matters, which allowed the research work to continue uninterrupted.
From 1971, the marine mammal research group became known as the Group for the Evolution of Sensory Systems of Vertebrates. The group's task was a comprehensive morphophysiological study of the patterns of evolutionary and adaptive changes in the sensory nerve centers of vertebrate animals. As before, research on the sensory systems of aquatic mammals occupied a special place in the group's work.
In 1974, the group was granted laboratory status and became known as the Laboratory of Sensory Systems of Vertebrates. For 40 years, its head remained unchanged — Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, and USSR State Prize laureate Alexander Yakovlevich Supin. Since 2014, the laboratory has been headed by Doctor of Biological Sciences Vladimir Vladimirovich Popov.
Hearing research was carried out not only at the Utrish Marine Station but also in the Russian Far East, Peru, China, the United States, and European countries, on various species of marine mammals.
Today the laboratory also comprises three groups: the Dolphin Hydrodynamics Group (headed by Dr. Sci. (Biol.), Cand. Sci. (Phys.-Math.) E.V. Romanenko), the Marine Mammal Sleep-Wake Cycle Research Group (headed by Cand. Sci. (Biol.) L.M. Mukhametov), and the Marine Mammal Ecology Group (headed by D.M. Glazov).