Frontal-Cerebellar Development Assessed with MRI & fMRI

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed studies aim to combine functional and structural MRI methodology to examine relationships between structural development and functional maturation in the frontal-cerebellar system, in both normally developing children and adolescents and those with histories of prental alcohol exposure (ALC). High resolution MRI coupled with surface-based computational algorithms will be used to measure grey matter thickness in frontal cortex and localized radial expansion of the cerebellar cortex. Correlational analyses will quantify the relationship between these structural features and functional activation during a verbal working memory task at every cortical surface point within the frontal and cerebellar corticies. These studies will further our understanding of the structural and functional changes in the cerebellum that result from prenatal exposure to alcohol. In addition, these studies represent a first attempt at (1) characterizing the structural maturation of the cerebellum, (2) relating cerebellar development to that of the frontal cortex, and (3) interrogating how structural differences in these regions impact functional activation on a frontal-cerebllar working memory task.