The paper deals with three major periods of scientific work of Nikolai Alexandrovich Bernstein, the outstanding Russian scientist, the founder the motor activity theory of human and animal. In 2016 is the 120th anniversary of Bernstein´s birth.

The first period of his scientific activity, from 1922 when Bernstein started his research at the Central Institute of Labour Protection until the middle of the 30s of the 20th century. By this time, he formulated and published the basic principles and ideas of the annular motion control and sensor correction movements of varying complexity and various performance. The second period ends with the fundamental scientific work «On the Construction of Movements» awarded by the USSR State Prize in 1948. The book sums up Bernstein´s more than twenty years of research in the field of biomechanics and physiology of movement. The paper briefly describes the main assumptions of the three chapters of the book. The first chapter «Movements» reveals the evolutionary ideas about the origin of motor function and shaped the principle of the equation of building movements. The second chapter describes five levels with different functionality in varying degrees involved in the implementation of motor actions. The third chapter of the «Development and Decay» deals with the general laws of occurrence and levels of building movements being signs of confirming the level structure of motion in pathology and standards.

In 1950-60-ies of the 20th century Bernstein greatly expanded representation of the functional content and neural substrate levels of building movements, detailed the stages and phases of shaping and improvement of motor skills.

The author shows the importance of scientific achievements of N.A. Bernstein for modern research in the psychophysiology of movements.

The paper aims to systematize modern concepts of body image and body scheme. For the analysis of theoretical models the following criteria were allocated: explication of the mechanism underlying the formation and restructuring of body image, development of certain aspects of body image which are explained by the presented concepts. Separately the issue of the difference between the body scheme and the body image is discussed that seems relevant in connection with the specific features of the neural mechanisms of body image. In the study of the phenomenological level of bodily experience the assumption that the body scheme is fragmented and has no hierarchical structure is considered. Significant differences in viewing basic mechanisms of developing the body image associated with attention to various bodily phenomena are showed. Psychodynamic, cognitive, socio-cultural, feminist and interdisciplinary approaches are analyzed, which permitted to identify mechanisms of integration-differentiation, cognitive generalization and internalization-introjection. The analysis suggests the consideration of the body image in the context of issues on the appropriation of the body. If person is considered as a tool for shaping and maintening integration of mental processes, the patterns of interconnected and interdependent changes in the processes that occur in the construction of the image of the external situation and the body image acquires a special psychological meaning. It becomes necessary to allocate correctly the structure of the integrating object in which the subject is involved during the normal course of life, and in exceptional cases, i.e. in the presence of physical defects, the sudden change of appearance, etc. These development objects determine specific form of body image and its possible distortions.