Journal
NEUROTOXICOLOGY AND TERATOLOGY
Volume 48, Issue -, Pages 69-77Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.ntt.2015.02.002
Keywords
Prenatal drug exposure; Illicit drugs; Working memory; Graph theory; fMRI; Adolescence; Cocaine
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [R01 DA07432, R01 DA021059]
- NIH, NIDA
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The persistence of effects of prenatal drug exposure (PDE) on brain functioning during adolescence is poorly understood. We explored neural activation to a visuospatial working memory (VSWM) versus a control task using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in adolescents with PDE and a community comparison group (CC) of non-exposed adolescents. We applied graph theory metrics to resting state data using a network of nodes derived from the VSWM task activation map to further explore connectivity underlying WM functioning. Participants (ages 12-15 years) included 47 adolescents (27 POE and 20 CC). All analyses controlled for potentially confounding differences in birth characteristics and postnatal environment. Significant group by task differences in brain activation emerged in the left middle frontal gyrus (BA 6) with the CC group, but not the PDE group, activating this region during VSWM. The PDE group deactivated the culmen, whereas the CC group activated it during the VSWM task. The CC group demonstrated a significant relation between reaction time and culmen activation, not present in the POE group. The network analysis underlying VSWM performance showed that POE group had lower global efficiency than the CC group and a trend level reduction in local efficiency. The network node corresponding to the BA 6 group by task interaction showed reduced nodal efficiency and fewer direct connections to other nodes in the network. These results suggest that adolescence reveals altered neural functioning related to response planning that may reflect less efficient network functioning in youth with PDE. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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