This article describes the methodological approach of systemic psychophysiology. In the framework of this approach a wide range of experimental data is analyzed: results of neuronal recordings in vitro and in awake normal and pathological animals learning to perform and performing both complex instrumental and simple behavioral acts. Another block of analyzed data is based on experiments with human subjects who learn and perform the tasks of categorization of words and operator tasks, participate in group game activity, and answer the questionnaires of psychodiagnostic methods. As a result of this analysis, the systemic psychophysiology approach is used to describe qualitatively and quantitatively the formation and realization of individual experience.

Activity of the 118 neurones was recorded from the cingulate cortex. The comparison of activity of each neurone in AAB and food-acquisition behaviour (FAB) enabled us to reveal that their subservings overleap substantially but not completely: 41% of 'common neurones' involved in the subserving of both FAB and AAB as well as 5% of 'alcohol-neurones' (alcohol-acquisition specific cells) were found. We think of the latter neurones as units that were specialized during the forming of alcohol-seeking behaviour. Thus, present experiments help us not only to answer the above questions but also to provide an additional insight into the nature of similarity between neuronal mechanisms of long-term memory and long-lived modifications resulting from repeated drug exposure.

The interactions of the neuronal mechanisms of food-acquiring behavior and newly formed operant alcohol-acquiring behavior were studied by recording the activity of individual neurons in the anterolateral area of the motor cortex in chronically alcoholized rabbits. Adult animals learned food-acquiring behavior in a cage with two feeders and two pedals, in the comers (the food in the feeders was presented after pressing the corresponding pedal). After nine months of chronic alcoholization, the same rabbits learned an alcohol-acquiring behavior in the same experimental cage (gelatin capsules filled with 15% ethanol solution were placed in the feeders instead of food). Analysis of neuron activity showed that the set of neurons involved in supporting food-acquiring and alcohol-acquiring behaviors overlapped, though not completely. These experiments not only help us understand the neuronal mechanisms of the newly formed and the previously formed behaviors, but also facilitate the development of concepts of the similarity of the neuronal mechanisms of long-term memory and long-term modifications of the nervous system, occurring in conditions of repeated intake of addictive substances.

Limbic cortex neurons as well as the temporal characteristics of the behavioral cycles were recorded in rabbits trained to perform a food-procuring behavior according to different strategies which were distinguished by the sequence of the stages of training. It was demonstrated that additional activations can appear in the nonspecific activity of neurons specialized relative to one of those behavioral acts for which the animal was trained directly in the experimental cage. Such activations appeared, depending upon the training strategy, during different types of the animal's behavior; the temporal characteristics of the behavioral cycles also varied. An inference is drawn regarding the activating influence of preceding experience on the behavioral acts formed directly after it.

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