Effects of chronic exposure to alcohol on the developing brain.

In this investigation using Golgi techniques, the relative effects of chronic alcohol exposure and malnutrition were studied in the developing cerebral cortex of the rat. Female Sprague-Dawley albino rats were placed on one of three dietary regimens for an eight-week conditioning period: an ethanol-containing (E) liquid diet, a liquid control (LC) diet isocaloric with the E diet, and a rat chow (CH) diet. The E and LC groups were pair-fed and all diets were continued through pregnancy and lactation. In comparison to the control groups, the E group showed a significant reduction in body and brain weight with a decrease in cerebral cortical width, density of basal, oblique, and terminal spines, and extent of oblique dendrites in layer IIIb somesthetic cortical pyramidal neurons. These findings indicate that changes in the cerebral cortex in the developing rat chronically exposed to alcohol cannot be explained by malnutrition alone.