Data from 217 children from Inuit communities in Arctic Quebec (average age 11), of whom some had mothers that reported binge drinking during pregnancy, has revealed that the alcohol-exposed group, while similar to the control in accuracy and reaction time, showed a significant differences in their brains’ electrical activity while doing those tasks (a Go/No-go response inhibition task and a continuous recognition memory task). The differences suggest that fetal alcohol exposure is associated with reduced efficiency in the initial extracting of the meaning of a stimulus, reduced allocation of attention to the task, and poorer conscious recognition memory processing.
Fetal alcohol exposure associated with a decrease in cognitive performance
Reference
Burden, M. J., Westerlund, A., Muckle, G., Dodge, N., Dewailly, E., Nelson, C. A., … Jacobson, J. L. (2010). The Effects of Maternal Binge Drinking During Pregnancy on Neural Correlates of Response Inhibition and Memory in Childhood. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, no-no - no-no. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2010.01323.x/abstract
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