(dailyRx)
The adverse effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on behavioral, cognitive and social development can lead to a range of symptoms referred to as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Attention and cognition problems seen in individuals with a history of prenatal alcohol exposure often resemble those linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
An assessment of these disorders has found that while children with FASD may meet the behavioral criteria for ADHD, their attention difficulties differ in subtle but important respects. The results of this assessment are set to appear in the April 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
“ADHD is clinically diagnosed primarily on the basis of observations by the parent, teacher and clinician regarding the degree to which a child exhibits specific behavioral symptoms, such as difficulty sustaining attention to and completing tasks or play activities, failure to listen when spoken to directly, impulsivity, talking out of turn or difficulty sitting still,” explained Joseph Jacobson, a professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine and the study’s corresponding author. “A large proportion of children with a history of prenatal alcohol exposure exhibits these behavioral characteristics and, therefore, may meet the criteria for a diagnosis of ADHD.”
Jacobson and his colleagues examined event-related potentials (ERPs), which reflect changes in the brain’s electrical activity in response to a particular stimulus or condition, in 102 (54 women, 48 men) 19-year-old participants. All the young adults performed a go/no-go task, which requires the participant to attend and respond selectively to nontarget stimuli (go) and inhibit responses to a target stimulus (no-go).
Jacobson explained how the go/no-go task was used in this study. “The participant is instructed to press a button whenever a letter appears on the screen, except when the letter X appears,” he said. “The participant gets into