Clearly, we are at the early stages of using brain imaging to help elucidate the effect of prenatal drug exposure. However, there are some interesting findings and trends. It is worthwhile pointing out that this body of work represents a “proof of principle” that this kind of work can be conducted even in very young children. Imaging techniques lend themselves to interrogate the brain in ways that make sense in relation to prenatal drug exposure such as measuring the volume of dopamine rich subcortical regions or designing fMRI tasks that capture brain activity related to the kind of behavioral and neurocognitive deficits that have been described in populations of drug exposed children.
