title: Cortical miscommunication after prenatal exposure to alcohol.
abstract: We report on the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on resting-state brain activity as measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG). We studied 37 subjects diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in one of three categories: fetal alcohol syndrome, partial fetal alcohol syndrome, and alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder. For each subject, the MEG signal was recorded for 60 s during rest while subjects lay supine. Using time series analysis, we calculated the synchronous neural interactions for all pair-wise combinations of 248 MEG sensors resulting in 30,628 partial correlations for each subject. We found significant differences from control subjects in 6.19 % of the partial zero-lag crosscorrelations (synchronous neural interactions; Georgopoulos et al. in J Neural Eng 4:349-355, 2007), with these differences localized in the right posterior frontal, right parietal, and left parietal/posterior frontal regions. These results show that MEG can detect functional brain differences in the individuals affected by prenatal exposure to alcohol. Furthermore, these differences may serve as a biomarker for future studies linking symptoms and signs to specific brain areas. This may lead to new insights into the neuropathology of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
authors.affiliation: Brain Sciences Center (11B), Minneapolis VA Health Care System, One Veterans Drive, Minneapolis, MN, 55417, USA. lewis093@umn.edu.|Department of Neurology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA. lewis093@umn.edu.
authors.forename: Scott M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Lewis
authors.affiliation: Brain Sciences Center (11B), Minneapolis VA Health Care System, One Veterans Drive, Minneapolis, MN, 55417, USA.|Department of Pediatric Neurology, Charles University, 2nd Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Motol, Prague, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Rosa R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Vydrová
authors.affiliation: Brain Sciences Center (11B), Minneapolis VA Health Care System, One Veterans Drive, Minneapolis, MN, 55417, USA.|Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
authors.forename: Arthur C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Leuthold
authors.affiliation: Brain Sciences Center (11B), Minneapolis VA Health Care System, One Veterans Drive, Minneapolis, MN, 55417, USA.|Department of Neurology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.|Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
authors.forename: Apostolos P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Georgopoulos
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000438:Alcohols / Q000009:adverse effects*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D063647:Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D006801:Humans; D015225:Magnetoencephalography; D008297:Male; D065886:Neurodevelopmental Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D011247:Pregnancy; D011297:Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects / Q000473:pathology*; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D000438:Alcohols
keywords: Fetal alcohol syndrome; Magnetoencephalography; Resting state; Synchronous neural interactions