The APS Journal Legacy Content is the corpus of 100 years of historical scientific research from the American Physiological Society research journals. This package goes back to the first issue of each of the APS journals including the American Journal of Physiology, first published in 1898. The full text scanned images of the printed pages are easily searchable. Downloads quickly in PDF format.

Fourteen children (12 infantile autism full syndrome present, 2 atypical pervasive developmental disorder) between 5 and 13 years of age participated in a double-blind placebo-controlled cross-over trial. Each child received 20 mg Org 2766 (synthetic analog of ACTH 4-9)/day during 4 weeks, or placebo in a randomly assigned sequence. Drug effects were monitored by ethological playroom observation and by Aberrant Behavior Checklist ratings by parents and teachers. Data of the playroom observation pointed to an activating influence of Org 2766, as revealed by a significant decrease of stereotypic behavior and significant increases in "change toys," "locomote," and "talk." Checklist ratings did not show significant changes. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Intranasal treatment with desglycinamide9\x=req-\ (Arg8)-vasopressin (DGAVP) improved certain aspects of cognitive functions of patients with acquired and congenital diabetes insipidus and of alcoholic patients with mild cognitive impairments. Patients with Korsakoff's syndrome, presenting with severe cognitive impairments, were resistent to DGVP treatment. DGAVP treatment did not affect blood pressure and water metabolism. The action of DGAVP on cognitive functions is probably mediated by centrally located target sites and may be expressed only in patients in whom these target sites are unimpaired.The neurohypophyseal hormone vasopressin has been implicated in cognitive processes. Originally this postulate emerged from rat studies showing that exogenously administered vasopressin facili¬ tates certain behavioural responses aimed at measuring memory functions (de Wied 1971;van Ree et al. 1978) and that these responses are disrupted in rats with hereditary hypothalamic diabetes insipidus (DI) lacking the ability to synthetize vasopressin (de Wied et al. 1975). The influence of vasopressin on these behavioural responses appeared to be dissociated from its action on blood pressure and water metabolism, as could be inferred from the effect of fragments of vasopressin e.g. desglycinamide9-(Arg8)-vasopressin (DGAVP), which are practically devoid of the classic endocrine effects of vasopressin (van Ree et al. 1978;de Wied et al. 1972de Wied et al. , 1984.Although a beneficial effect of vasopressin and related peptides on memory functions has been observed in humans, the sofar collected data are not consistent (Jolies 1983;Legros & Lancranjan 1984;van Ree et al. 1985). In particular, conflict¬ ing results have been reported in patients suffer¬ ing from Korsakoffs or Alzheimer's diseases, which may be related to a more or less widespread pathologic process in the brain of these patients, probably resulting in more or less severity of cognitive disturbances. In most of these clinical trials, vasopressin or l-desamino-8-D-argininevasopressin has been administered. The inherent antidiuretic properties of these peptides could have interfered with their supposed enhancing action on memory functions. In previous studies we have found that DGAVP has effects on mem¬ ory processes in some, but not all patients (Laczi et al. 1983a,b).For the present series of clinical trials we raised the following questions: 1) Has DGAVP a bene¬ ficial effect on cognitive functions in different categories of patients as examined using a doubleblind placebo controlled parallel design. 2) Is this action of DGAVP dissociated from an influence on blood pressure and water metabolism. 3) Is the effectiveness of DGAVP influenced by the severity of the cognitive disturbances.

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Limbic structures are involved in learning and memory processes. These structures are richly innervated by fibers containing neurotransmitters and neuropeptides. Corticosteroids and adrenomedullary hormones and peptides related to acetylcholine, corticotrophin-releasing hormone, melanophore-stimulating hormone, oxytocin, vasopressin, and several others modulate learning and memory processes and limbic system activity.