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Excitable psychopathic personalities manifest qualitative and quantitative disorders of cognitive activity directly unrelated to emotional reactions. If the result of the activity is estimated by some other person with the aid of positive and negative reinforcement stimuli, deficit of the training is marked to a much greater degree than in cases where the excitable personality itself draws, on the basis of information available in the feedback stimulus, the conclusion whether its decision was right or erroneous.

Evoked cortical potentials in response to conditioned visual stimuli were recorded in excitable psychopathic personalities in the course of formation and reproduction of temporary relations with a realized or non-realized emotional word. Diazepam (10 mg intramuscularly) suppresses cortical reaction worked out previously with the aid of a realized emotional word and fails to produce and action if that word was non-realized. The fact of the lack of the diazepam effect on conditioned emotional reactions formed at the non-realized level should be taken into consideration in the treatment of patients with disturbances in the emotional sphere.

An experimental study of individuals with late sequelae of closed cerebrocranial trauma, demonstrated that diverse signs of CNS activity to a different extent may be under the influence of small doses of alcohol. For instance, the sensorial process does not change significantly, which may indicate a relative independence of specific sensorial pathways (including the cortical area) from small doses of alcohol. Changes in cortical electro-activity and the threshold of the orientation reflex, the mechanisms of which are connected with the function of the brain stem reticular formation, points to an inhibitory action of alcohol on it. Against the background of alcoholic influence the socially significant emotionally negative stimula intensify emotional stress, the action of which is related to the activity of the limbic system structures and a weakening of the function of associative cortical fields. The results of this study permit to assume that different functional-structural mechanisms may lie at the basis of an emotional background (mood) and emotional stress.