Altered neurotransmission in the mesolimbic dopamine (DA) system has been suggested to be the underlying cause of attention problems commonly observed in children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Methylphenidate is effective in treating attention problems in children with FASD. However, the underlying mechanism is currently unknown. We have shown previously that reduced ventral tegmental area (VTA) DA neuron activity in prenatal ethanol-exposed animals can be normalized by DA agonist treatment. In the present study, we investigated the possibility that similar mechanism mediates the effect of methylphenidate using the in vivo extracellular single-unit recording technique in anesthetized animals. We observed that reduced VTA DA neuron activity in prenatal ethanol-exposed animals was normalized by methylphenidate. The effect of methylphenidate was mediated by increased extracellular levels of DA instead of norepinephrine because this effect was not altered by the coadministration of prazosin, an ␣ 1 receptor antagonist, and was mimicked by the application of DA transporter blockers, nomifensine and 1-2(-[bis(4-flurophenyl)methoxy]ethyl)-4-(3-phenyl)piperazine dihydrochloride (GBR 12909). These observations support our hypothesis that depolarization inactivation is the cause of prenatal ethanol exposure-induced reduction in VTA DA neuron activity. We speculate that methylphenidate normalized the activity of VTA DA neurons by increasing extracellular DA levels in the VTA and the activation of somatodendritic DA autoreceptors. As a result, the depolarization inactivation was removed by hyperpolarization. The normalized VTA DA neuron activity in prenatal ethanol-exposed animals may contribute to a restoration of DA neurotransmission and the therapeutic effect of methylphenidate in attention problems in children with FASD.Prenatal ethanol exposure leads to abnormalities in the function of the midbrain dopamine (DA) system. For example, there is a reduction in DA uptake and receptor binding sites, DA content, and the DA metabolites in both the somatodendritic and terminal areas (Rathbun and Druse, 1985;Cooper and Rudeen, 1988;Druse et al., 1990) in prenatal ethanol-exposed animals. Prenatal ethanol exposure also can lead to changes in DA neuron morphology [e.g., smaller cell bodies and retarded dendritic growth in DA neurons (Shetty et al., 1993), DA receptor function (Shen et al., 1995;Wang and Shen, 2002), and DA receptor-mediated behavior (Hannigan and Randall, 1996)]. Recently, impairment in sustained attention, which could be modulated by DA (Davids et al., 2003), was also reported in prenatal ethanol-exposed animals (Hausknecht et al., 2003).In previous electrophysiological studies, we have demonstrated that prenatal ethanol exposure leads to a persistent reduction in the electrical activity of the midbrain DA neurons without a loss of DA neurons (Shen et al., 1999;Xu and Shen, 2001). Because the electrical activity controls the synthesis and release of DA (Gonon and Buda, 1985; SuaudChagny et ...