The Effects of Developmental Alcohol Exposure on the Neurobiology of Spatial Processing

Publication date: Available online 14 September 2019Source: Neuroscience & Biobehavioral ReviewsAuthor(s): Ryan E. Harvey, Laura E. Berkowitz, Derek A. Hamilton, Benjamin J. ClarkAbstractThe consumption of alcohol during gestation is detrimental to the developing central nervous system. One functional outcome of this exposure is impaired spatial processing, defined as sensing and integrating information pertaining to spatial navigation and spatial memory. The hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, and anterior thalamus are brain regions implicated in spatial processing and are highly susceptible to the effects of developmental alcohol exposure. Some of the observed effects of alcohol on spatial processing may be attributed to changes at the synaptic to circuit level. In this review, we first describe the impact of developmental alcohol exposure on spatial behavior followed by a summary of the development of brain areas involved in spatial processing. We then provide an examination of the consequences of prenatal and early postnatal alcohol exposure in rodents on hippocampal, anterior thalamus, and entorhinal cortex-dependent spatial processing from the cellular to behavioral level and highlight several unanswered questions that provide a framework for future investigation.
Source: Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research