Tashkent Medical Academy, Tashkent, Uzbekistan Cognitive impairments at various stages of clinical opiate addiction* Received 23.02.2012 г. <...> Ключевые слова: героин, нейрокогнитивные изменения, поражение ЦНС, компьютерно-томографическое исследование, стаж заболевания. * Орфография и стиль авторов сохранены. – Прим. ред. 68 Оригинальные исследования Opiate addiction (OA) facilitates toxic affection of various organs and systems, primarily, of central nervous system (CNS) and higher brain functions. <...> Neurocognitive impairments are the most typical manifestations of CNS organic disorders, the degree of their intensity varying from mild to severe [1, 4, 9]. <...> Complexity and many-sidedness of opiate addiction problem requires work-up in various directions with synthesis of findings accumulated in the course of studying not only psychic sphere, but CNS as a whole, higher brain functions included. <...> Opiate addiction is associated with affection of neurochemical and neurophysiological processes, morphological changes in the brain, as well as with psychic and behavioral disorders. <...> Both addiction duration and age of drug use onset determine the intensity of OA-associated neurocognitive impairments and other organic psychic disorders. <...> The earlier the drug use starts and the longer it continues, the more severe organic changes take place in the addict’s brain and the more pronounced neurocognitive impairments are. <...> Defective operative and short-term memory as well as low motivational activity can be specified as typical manifestations. <...> Heroin affects formation of complex inductive inferences, visual-spatial coordination, understanding of logical-grammatical relations, spatial analysis and synthesis; disorders of visual memory, tactile perception and praxis being registered as well [2, 6–9]. <...> According to Rokhlina (2000) and Kozlov (2001) intellectual mnestic disorders occurred in 100% of opiate addicts, their degree assessed as mild, moderate and severe in 34%, 56% and 10%, respectively. <...> Occurrence of OA-associated neurocognitive impairments, organic psychic disorders as well as their clinical picture and dynamics are determined by a number of factors, such as overdose usually associated with onset of encephalopathy of various severity, frequent use of homemade psychoactive substances with high concentrations of toxic foreign bodies directly affecting and poisoning CNS to result in rapid <...>