ArticleAlcoholism, clinical and experimental research2020
Reduced Hippocampal Volumes Partially Mediate Effects of Prenatal Alcohol Exposure on Spatial Navigation on a Virtual Water Maze Task in Children.
Article in Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prenatal alcohol exposure and associations with physical size, dysmorphology and neurodevelopment: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2024Pooled it
- Large-scale in vivo electrophysiology analysis reveals opposing thalamic and hippocampal excitability after third-trimester-equivalent alcohol exposure in mice.Journal of neurophysiology · 2026Article
- ACSS2 mediates prenatal alcohol exposure-related morphological and behavioral phenotypes.Neurobiology of disease · 2026Article
- Ethanol Alters DNMT1/3a/3b Expression Profile, Promotes Persistent DNA Hypomethylation in Human Brain Endothelial Cells and Impairs Late Cortical Angiogenesis.Journal of neurochemistry · 2026Article
- Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and Mitochondrial Function in the Brain.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Unsupervised Phenotyping Reveals Disrupted Neural Firing Characteristics in the Anterior Thalamus and Surrounding Brain Regions Following Third-Trimester Equivalent Alcohol Exposure in Mice.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The Neurobiology of Learning and Memory in Rodent Models of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2025Review
- Binge-like ethanol exposure during the brain growth spurt disrupts the function of retrosplenial cortex-projecting anterior thalamic neurons in adolescent mice.Neuropharmacology · 2023Article
- Unraveling the complex relationship between prenatal alcohol exposure, hippocampal LTP, and learning and memory.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2023Review
- Prenatal ethanol exposure leads to persistent anxiety-like behavior during adulthood indicated by reduced horizontal and vertical exploratory behaviors.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Prenatal alcohol and tetrahydrocannabinol exposure: Effects on spatial and working memory.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Mechanisms Underlying Cognitive Impairment Induced by Prenatal Alcohol Exposure.Brain sciences · 2022Review
- Functional and Structural Correlates of Impaired Enrichment-Mediated Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis in a Mouse Model of Prenatal Alcohol Exposure.Brain plasticity (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2020Article
- Moderate Prenatal Alcohol Exposure Impairs Visual-Spatial Discrimination in a Sex-Specific Manner: Effects of Testing Order and Difficulty on Learning Performance.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2020Article
- Ethanol modulation of hippocampal neuroinflammation, myelination, and neurodevelopment in a postnatal mouse model of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.Neurotoxicology and teratologyArticle
- Hippocampal subfield abnormalities and memory functioning in children with fetal alcohol Spectrum disorders.Neurotoxicology and teratologyArticle
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPrenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) has been linked to poorer performance on the Morris water maze (MWM), a test of spatial navigation in rodents that is dependent on hippocampal functioning. We recently confirmed these findings in children with PAE on a human analog of the MWM, the virtual water maze (VWM). Previous studies have shown that the hippocampus is particularly sensitive to PAE. Our aim was to determine whether hippocampal volume mediates the relation between PAE and virtual navigation.
methodsVWM and MRI hippocampal data were collected from 50 right-handed 10-year-old children in a heavily exposed Cape Town, South African sample. PAE data had been collected from their mothers during pregnancy, and the children were examined by expert fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) dysmorphologists. In the VWM, the participant attempts to learn the location of a hidden platform in a virtual pool of water across a series of learning trials using only distal room cues. Hippocampal volumes were derived using FreeSurfer from MRI scans administered within 1 week of completing the VWM task.
resultsBoth the fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)/partial FAS and nonsyndromal heavy-exposed (HE) groups had smaller hippocampal volumes than controls. PAE was associated with reduced right hippocampal volumes even after control for total intracranial volume (ICV). Hippocampal volume was also positively associated with VWM performance. The relation between PAE and VWM performance was partially mediated by right hippocampal volume but not by total ICV.
conclusionsThese data confirm previous reports linking PAE to poorer spatial navigation on the VWM and are the first to provide direct evidence that volume reductions in this region partially mediate the relation of FASD diagnosis to place learning, suggesting that PAE specifically impairs the ability to encode the spatial information necessary for successful location of the hidden platform on a navigation task.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.