Understanding specific effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on brain structure in young adults

Abstract

Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is associated with various adverse effects on human brain and behavior. Recently, neuroimaging studies have begun to identify PAE effects on specific brain structures. Investigation of such specific PAE effects is important for understanding the teratogenic mechanism of PAE on human brain, which is critical for differentiating PAE from other disorders. In this structural MRI study with young adults, PAE effects on the volumes of automatically segmented cortical and sub-cortical regions of interest (ROIs) were evaluated both through a group difference approach and a parametric approach. In the group difference approach (comparing among two PAE and a control groups), a disproportionate PAE effect was found in several occipital and temporal regions. This result is inconsistent with previous studies with child samples. Moreover, a gender difference in PAE effect was shown in some cortical ROIs. These findings suggest that sampling and gender may be important factors for interpreting specific PAE effects on human brain. With the parametric approach, it was demonstrated that the higher the PAE level, the smaller the entire brain, the lower the IQ. Several cortical and sub-cortical ROIs also exhibited a negative correlation between the PAE level and ROI volume. Furthermore, our data showed that the PAE effect on the brain could not be interpreted by the PAE effect on general physical growth until the young adult age. This study provides valuable insight into specific effects of PAE on human brain, and suggests important implications for future studies in this field.

Functional Neuroimaging in the Examination of Effects of Prenatal Alcohol Exposure

“…Human and animal studies (Sulik et al, this volume) have documented both global and specific alterations in brain anatomy. For instance, alcohol exposure is often associated with smaller intracranial volume as well as volume deficits in specific brain regions over and above those accounted for by small intracranial volume (Archibald et al 2001;Chen et al 2011). Given this evidence of neurological and neurobehavioral impact, it is highly probable that functional neuroimaging, which enables observation and recording of brain activation in human samples, also will identify alterations associated with prenatal alcohol exposure whether or not accompanied by structural differences.…”

Review of Current Neuroimaging Studies of the Effects of Prenatal Drug Exposure: Brain Structure and Function

“…Among pregnant women, the rate of any illicit drug use is 5.4% and has not changed significantly since 2010-2011 [12]. Use remains higher in younger women (14.6%, ages 18-25) compared to older women (3.2%, ages [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. A high proportion of women are using marijuana illegally and fail to disclose their use to their providers.…”

“…Prenatal alcohol is associated with overall reductions in global [38,39] and regional brain volume including the hippocampus, basal ganglia, cingulate cortex, and corpus callosum [37,[40][41][42][43]. Several studies indicate that reductions in brain volume linked to prenatal alcohol exposure were associated with deficits in cognitive function and facial dsymorphology.…”

7,8-Dihydroxyflavone as a pro-neurotrophic treatment for neurodevelopmental disorders

“…Chen et al, 2012;Lebel et al, 2012), deficits in various forms of learning and memory Lewis et al, 2015) as well as attentional and behavioural problems and psychiatric illnesses like depression (O'Connor et al, 2002;Roebuck et al, 1999). Exposure to ethanol intrauterine causes brain structural malformations e early exposure alters migration of neuronal and glial cells (Clarren et al, 1978) and animal studies have found that prenatal ethanol exposure reduced cell numbers in the limbic cortex (Museridze and Gegenava, 2010) and caused abnormal development of the hippocampus (Lobaugh et al, 1991).…”