Vadim Rotenberg received a medical education and specialized in psychiatry. He took part in the development of concepts of psychological defense, studied altered states of consciousness, in particular, hypnosis. His work on sleep made a major contribution to the modern understanding of the functions of the various stages of sleep, especially paradoxical sleep. At thirty-seven years old, he defended his doctoral dissertation in psychiatry, dedicated to the study of human sleep, thus becoming one of the youngest doctors of science in the field of medicine in the USSR. Together with V. Arshavsky, he is the author of the theory of search activity - a global concept aimed at understanding the behavior and psyche of humans and animals.