While facial measures reflect gross structural brain anomalies in prenatal alcohol exposed individuals, it is not clear if facial dysmorphology relates to white matter microstructural or functional brain changes. No relationship has been observed between corpus callosum microstructure and facial dysmorphology [67, 68], although a positive relationship between FA in the left middle cerebellar peduncle and diagnostic severity has been reported [69]. There may be a relationship between brain activation and diagnostic severity, as Diwadkar et al. [54] showed that children with a diagnosis of FAS/partial-FAS activated different regions during a working memory task as compared to heavily exposed nonsyndromal children. However, when examining activation patterns during resting state no relationship between facial dysmorphology and functional connectivity was observed [60, 61]. More work is necessary to determine if a relationship may exist between facial dysmorphology and measures of white matter integrity and/or brain activation patterns.
