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Alcohol consumption during pregnancy can cause cognitive impairments in your child

Alcohol consumption during pregnancy can cause cognitive impairments in your child
There is no safe amount or safe stages during pregnancy for alcohol consumption. © Shutterstock

A new study published in the journal Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, has revealed that exposure to alcohol while in womb may cause Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in teenage.

Written by ANI |Published : April 27, 2019 3:01 PM IST

A group of researchers have found that the biological changes that occur in the brain of teenagers who were exposed to alcohol while in the womb during pregnancy, leads to abnormalities like Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). The study was published in the journal, `Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science`.

The research stated that in such conditions the brain shows up signs of impaired cognitive performance.The findings were conducted by measuring the responses from a brain imaging technique called magnetoencephalography (MEG) and then analyzing them with tools developed using chaos theory. FASD is considered to be one of the leading causes of intellectual disability worldwide and is associated with a wide array of neurological issues, including Affecting Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

While the prevailing theory links expectant mothers` alcohol consumption to cognitive impairments in children. The extent of the effect of alcohol consumption on the child in the womb remains unanswered. Despite the known link, researchers are uncertain about the precise mechanism by which alcohol alters the developing brain.

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The efforts made by the researchers have been able to quantify the effects of alcohol exposure on the developing brain."The paper provides important integrative results for the field of FASD," said Julia Stephen, one of the researchers. "These results may then indicate that simple sensory measures may provide sensitivity for brain deficits that affect the broader cognitive domain. "The previous attempts to study brain circuitry in affected individuals have been obstructed by the difficulty of drawing conclusions from complicated MEG data.

To get deep into the problem, members of the researching team developed a sophisticated computer technique called Cortical Start Spatio-Temporal multi-dipole analysis that could identify which areas of the brain were active when research subjects were in the MEG machine.After collecting data from 19 FASD patients and 21 subjects without FASD, the computational approach revealed several areas of the brain that showed impaired connectivity among the FASD group.

Subjects who were exposed to alcohol in the womb were more likely to have issues with connections through their corpus callosum, the band of brain tissue that connects the left and right halves of the brain. Deficits in this area have been reported in people with schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, autism, depression, and abnormalities in sensation. "This work presents major evidence that children exposed to alcohol prenatally are at risk of suffering from impaired cognitive abilities and other secondary factors," said Lin Gao, a researcher.

"Our study shows that there is no safe amount or safe stages during pregnancy for alcohol consumption."The authors hope their work inspires other groups to conduct similarly collaborative research on diseases like FASD that benefit from drawing together medical and computational fields.