[Effect of vasopressin on long-term memory (psychophysiological and clinical aspects)]

In chronic alcoholic patients with reduced ability for memorizing, lysin-vasopressin (LVP) exerts an obvious positive effect upon the involuntary long-term memory. The effect is more obvious in tests demanding a semantic processing of information rather than the automatic memorizing. Under the LVP effect, an enhancement of the alpha-rhythm synchronization occurs in the EEG. The maximal "inhibitory" effect of the LVP occurs against background of desynchronization with an initial increased level of unspecific ascending influences. The LVP rises the upper limit of the response in the form of the EEG rhythms rearrangement, i. e. it increases the lability of cerebral structures. In conditioning therapy of chronic alcoholism the LVP increases the negative reflex to ethanol formed on the basis of apomorphine. The data obtained reveal an essential acceleration and increased durability of conditioning to ethanol as the result of the LVP use.