When the Slovak Academy of Sciences was founded in 1953 several medical research laboratories were set up, and lately in 1957 they were incorporated as departments in the former Institute of Experimental Medicine. Since 1965, the departments of Experimental Surgery and Experimental Hygiene have been constituted as independent institutes, and according to the profile of the scientific - research programme, the Institute has been renamed the Institute of Normal and Pathological Physiology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Contemporarily, the Institute is the only Slovak research institution dealing with the systemic and organ human physiology (basic and clinical research). The establishment of the Institute has allowed the promotion of research in human cardiovascular physiology, human neurophysiology and psychophysiology on a professional level in Slovakia. The problems of hypertension and of vascular blood flow, of the electrical heart field, of processing information in brain as related to several disorders and diseases, of the human postural mechanisms and of possibilities to model disturbancies of brain information processing are in the centre of interest. By means of cooperation with multiple clinical centres in Bratislava the clinical research in the above fields is being developed and some unique methods of patients examinations are offered for specialised services – medical service for the broader use in hospital praxis

Since 1960, the Institute has played an important role in international activities resulting in the foundation of the Collegium Internationale Activitatis Nervosae Superioris and of the International Society of Electrocardiology.