MRC/UCT Medical Imaging Research Unit, Department of Human Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2010 Aug;34(8):1450-64. doi: 10.1111/j.1530-0277.2010.01230.x. Epub 2010 Jun 7.
Number processing deficits are frequently seen in children exposed to alcohol in utero.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine the neural correlates of number processing in 15 right-handed, 8- to 12-year-old children diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) or partial FAS (PFAS) and 18 right-handed, age- and gender-matched controls from the Cape Coloured (mixed ancestry) community in Cape Town, South Africa, using Proximity Judgment and Exact Addition tasks.
Control children activated the expected fronto-parietal network during both tasks, including the anterior horizontal intraparietal sulcus (HIPS), left posterior HIPS, left precentral sulcus, and posterior medial frontal cortex. By contrast, on the Proximity Judgment task, the exposed children recruited additional parietal pathways involving the right and left angular gyrus and posterior cingulate/precuneus, which may entail verbally mediated recitation of numbers and/or subtraction to assess relative numerical distances. During Exact Addition, the exposed children exhibited more diffuse and widespread activations, including the cerebellar vermis and cortex, which have been found to be activated in adults engaged in particularly challenging number processing problems.
The data suggest that, whereas control children rely primarily on the fronto-parietal network identified in previous studies to mediate number processing, children with FAS/PFAS recruit a broader range of brain regions to perform these relatively simple number processing tasks. Our results are consistent with structural neuroimaging findings indicating that the parietal lobe is relatively more affected by prenatal alcohol exposure and provide the first evidence for brain activation abnormalities during number processing in children with FAS/PFAS, effects that persist even after controlling statistically for group differences in total intracranial volume and IQ.
在子宫内接触酒精的儿童经常出现数字处理缺陷。
使用功能磁共振成像检查了 15 名右利手 8 至 12 岁被诊断为胎儿酒精谱系障碍（FAS）或部分 FAS（PFAS）的儿童以及来自南非开普敦有色人种（混合血统）社区的 18 名右利手、年龄和性别匹配的对照组的数字处理的神经相关性，使用接近判断和精确加法任务。
对照组儿童在两个任务中均激活了预期的额顶叶网络，包括前水平顶内沟（HIPS）、左后 HIPS、左中央前沟和后内侧额皮质。相比之下，在接近判断任务中，暴露组儿童募集了额外的顶叶通路，涉及右和左角回和后扣带回/楔前叶，这可能需要口头介导数字的背诵和/或减法来评估相对数字距离。在精确加法过程中，暴露组儿童表现出更弥散和广泛的激活，包括小脑蚓部和皮质，在从事特别具有挑战性的数字处理问题的成年人中已经发现这些区域被激活。
数据表明，虽然对照组儿童主要依赖于先前研究中确定的额顶叶网络来介导数字处理，但 FAS/PFAS 儿童招募了更广泛的脑区来执行这些相对简单的数字处理任务。我们的结果与结构神经影像学研究结果一致，表明顶叶在产前酒精暴露中相对更受影响，并为 FAS/PFAS 儿童在数字处理过程中的大脑激活异常提供了第一个证据，即使在统计学上控制总颅内体积和 IQ 组间差异后，这些影响仍然存在。
