Vasopressin treatment of cognitive dysfunction un progressive dementia

Progressive dementia patients demonstrate profound and obvious learning-memory impairments. To a large extent, these are determined by failures to access and use previously learned knowledge (semantic memory) to affect encoding and processing of ongoing events (episodic memory). There are other forms of memory failures in man that are likely to be determined by quite different psychobiological mechanisms, such as failures to retain or consolidate information in memory. One important way in which drug treatments may facilitate the learning-memory impairment in mildly demented patients is by making semantic memory structures more accessible. Patients treated with 1-desoamino-8-D-arginine vasopressin (DDAVP), a synthetic analog of the hypothalmic peptide arginine vasopressin, demonstrate cognitive enhancement by facilitating access to semantic memory structures that are part of long-term memory.