Rao et al. reported 10% decrease in global cerebral blood flow (CBF) in adolescents with prenatal cocaine exposure41. They observed a relative increase in CBF in anterior and superior brain regions and suggested that this may be due to development of compensatory mechanisms for reduced global cerebral blood flow during neural ontogeny. Their findings were based on the MRI scans of 25 cocaine-exposed and 24 control subjects (average 14 years old). The perfusion fMRI scans were acquired using arterial spin labeling (ASL).
