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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.

Acute effect of ethanol on hippocampal neurons was studied during food acquisition behaviour in seven rabbits. The rabbits were taught to acquire food from a feeder by pressing a pedal on the same side of the cage. The behaviourally specialized units (L units related to newly learned behaviour and M units related to behaviour formed before learning, e.g. certain movements) were comparable with the 'place' (projectional pyramidal and granular cells) and 'displace' (non-pyramidal interneurons) units of the current classification. The same direction of ethanol effects was found as for the limbic cortex; the number of certain kinds of L units decreased and that of M units increased but there was no significant change in the relative number of L and M units as a whole. The background frequency of L units decreased, but the frequency within activations increased. The results confirm our earlier findings on the most marked depressive effect of ethanol on L units and show that it is the behavioural specialization, not the morphological unit type, which is a major determinant of the ethanol influence.

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.