[Vascular component of mental disorders in patients with organic lesions of the brain]

The paper concerns the results of 30 years of investigations of the Kiev Research Institute of Neurosurgery into correlations between syndromes of mental activity reduction (coma, stupor, global and lacunar dementias, Alzheimer-like and Pick-like syndromes, personality changes by the frontal type, stable neurosis-like conditions, Korsakov's syndrome, disturbed consciousness by the amentive type) in patients with organic brain lesions and objectively recordable changes in cerebral hemodynamics. It has been established that the pathological mechanisms of formation of different syndromes of mental activity reduction are naturally related to deceleration of the general and regional volumetric cerebral blood flow (RVCBF) and a decrease of the general and regional reaction of cerebral vessels (RCV). In this respect, the character of the psychopathological syndrome is specified by localization (lobar and interhemispheric) of the primary deceleration of the RVCBF and RCV decrease; by the rate of augmentation of those changes, their intensity and duration, constancy or periodicity; background against which there develops the hypoxic process; as well as by the development of the underlying disease.