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BackgroundChildren and adolescents with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) exhibit a range of physical, cognitive, behavioral, and/or learning deficits, as wells as poor executive functioning (EF). Children and adolescents with FASD often show greater impairments on complex neuropsychological tasks. However, little is known about age-related differences among children and adolescents with FASD.ObjectivesThe goals of this cross-sectional study were to explore the overall profile of neuropsychological impairments and extended previous reports on age-related differences among children and adolescents with FASD. MethodWe compared 117 children and adolescents diagnosed with an FASD (aged 5-17 years), clinically assessed on a broad range of tests covering 6 neurobehavioral domains. Data from a clinical database was used to generate profiles of neuropsychological impairments for clinically referred children and adolescents evaluated for FASD between 2001 and 2005. ResultsChildren and adolescents were impaired (relative to the norm) on a number of domains that include academic achievement, language, verbal memory, EF, visual-motor integration, and motor abilities. Older participants with FASD (relative to the norm) showed greater difficulty in areas involving EF or processing of complex information than younger participants. ConclusionsThese results suggest that for children and adolescents with FASD impairments in those areas important for independent functioning may become more pronounced with increasing age. However, further longitudinal research is needed to ascertain age changes over time.

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Regional cortical thickness was evaluated using CIVET processing of 3D T1-weighted images (i) to compare the variation in cortical thickness between 33 participants with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) aged 6-30 years (mean age 12.3 years) versus 33 age/sex/hand-matched controls, and (ii) to examine developmental changes in cortical thickness with age from children to young adults in both groups. Significant cortical thinning was found in the participants with FASD in large areas of the bilateral middle frontal lobe, pre- and post- central areas, lateral and inferior temporal and occipital lobes compared to controls. No significant cortical thickness increases were observed for the FASD group. Cortical thinning with age in a linear model was observed in both groups, but the locations were different for each group. FASD participants showed thinning with age in the left middle frontal, bilateral precentral, bilateral precuneus and paracingulate, left inferior occipital and bilateral fusiform gyri; while controls showed decreases with age in the bilateral middle frontal gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral precuneus gyrus, and bilateral occipital gyrus. A battery of cognitive assessments of memory, attention, motor, and verbal abilities was conducted with many of the FASD participants, but no significant correlations were found between these cognitive scores and regional cortical thickness. Non-invasive measurements of cortical thickness in children to young adults with FASD have identified both key regions of cortex that may be more deleteriously affected by prenatal alcohol exposure as well as cortical changes with age that differ from normal developmental thinning.

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BACKGROUND: Previous research indicates that children with FASD have both memory and learning deficits. However, there is no consensus about whether the deficits identified from a pattern of impairment, and whether this pattern is consistent with the current theories regarding the organization of memory. Thus, the goal of this study was to further explore memory functions and expose possible patterns that may exist in children with FASD. METHODS: The Children's Memory Scale (CMS) was used to measure visual and verbal memory, as well as learning and encoding, among 30 children with FASD (ages 9-16 years). Functioning was conceptualized through use of a model of working memory. RESULTS: A significant difference between types of verbal memory in the FASD sample was identified. Specifically, recall of word pairs was found to be more impaired than that for stories. In addition to this, recall of immediate word pairs was significantly more impaired than that for delayed word pairs, implying the presence of encoding deficits in this area. CONCLUSIONS: Children and adolescents with FASD displayed specific types of verbal memory deficits and these deficits were greater for immediate rather than delayed memory. These data are consistent with previous studies that describe deficits in immediate memory, and suggest that deficits in delayed memory are better accounted for by encoding deficits. Furthermore, their greatest difficulty arose with those items in which the phonological loop was required, which would have facilitated learning though internal recitation and adequate phonological storage. Further research into these distinctions in memory is warranted, as is exploration into educational techniques that could account for delayed encoding in children with FASD.

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