Prenatal Alcohol Exposure: Cognitive and Brain Function

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This K01 application will provide specialized training in the skills necessary to study changes in brain function resulting from prenatal exposure to alcohol. Although research has broadly characterized the neuropsychological deficits associated with prenatal alcohol, a greater understanding of the underlying mechanisms, as well as the specificity of cognitive deficits, is needed. The proposed research provides a hypothesis driven approach for identifying functional brain alterations associated with prenatal alcohol exposure. This award will enable the applicant to establish a research career focused on studying the neural substrates of cognitive development in individuals with prenatal alcohol exposure. The applicant will obtain additional training in: 1) the neural circuitry subserving cognitive behavior and its development, 2) experimental design, implementation, and quantitative methods of neuroimaging studies, and 3) the interactions between biology and cognition that are related to prenatal alcohol exposure. The applicant will examine the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on cognitive and brain function using tasks that probe attention, voluntary response suppression, and working memory. These specific tasks were chosen because previous studies have demonstrated deficits in these behaviors in children prenatally exposed to alcohol. In addition, these basic cognitive functions are crucial for more complex cognitive behaviors such as executive functions, which are affected in adolescents with prenatal alcohol exposure. The proposed research will provide crucial information for the identification, intervention, and rehabilitation of individuals exposed to alcohol during pregnancy.