ADHD Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about ADHD, including details on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, drugs, treatment, symptoms.

Prenatal alcohol exposure causes attention deficits in male rats.

Hausknecht KA, Acheson A, Farrar AM, Kieres AK, Shen RY, Richards JB, Sabol KE

Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA.

Children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) are often diagnosed with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These children show increases in reaction time (RT) variability and false alarms on choice reaction time (CRT) tasks. In this study, adult rats prenatally exposed to ethanol were trained to perform a CRT task. An analysis of the distribution of RTs obtained from the CRT task found that rats with a history of prenatal ethanol exposure had more variable RT distributions, possibly because of lapses of attention. In addition, it was found that, similar to children with FASD, the ethanol-exposed rats had more false alarms. Thus, rats with prenatal ethanol exposure show attention deficits that are similar to those of children with FASD and ADHD.

Published 24 February 2005 in Behav Neurosci, 119(1): 302-10.
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