BULLETIN BOARD - ALCOHOL REPORTS

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: Etiology, Epidemiology and Advances in Diagnosis Kenneth R. Warren, PhD Acting Director, NIAAA Wednesday, April 27, 2011 12 noon - 1 p.m. Lecture on videocast

Women who drink alcohol during pregnancy are more likely to give birth prematurely or have a miscarriage, a new study has revealed.The research, published in the journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, looked at the amounts of alcohol women consumed during the early stages of their gestation and the effect this had on their unborn child. > > > > Read More

Functional neuroimaging offers the opportunity to understand the effect of prenatal alcohol exposure on the activities of the brain as well as providing a window into the relationship between neural activation and the behavioral outcomes that have been described in affected individuals. Several different methodologies have been used to examine the neurophysiological signal changes

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, such as magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), have recently been applied to the study of both normal and abnormal structure and neurochemistry in small animals. Herein, findings from studies in which these methods have been used for the examination of animal models of

Over the past 5 years, Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) has begun to provide new evidence about the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on white matter development. DTI, which examines microstructural tissue integrity, is sensitive to more subtle white matter abnormalities than traditional volumetric MRI methods. Thus far, the available DTI data suggest that white matter microstructural

Prenatal alcohol exposure has numerous effects on the developing brain, including damage to selective brain structure. We review structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of brain abnormalities in subjects prenatally exposed to alcohol. The most common findings include reduced brain volume and malformations of the corpus callosum. Advanced methods have been able to detect shape