It is clear that neonatal alcohol exposure results in changes in the morphology of Layer II/III mPFC pyramidal cells, yet it remains to be shown, using a rat model, whether these changes are accompanied by the deficits in prefrontal cortex-dependent behavior. A human study, looking at the brains of alcoholics, shows significant decrease in basilar dendritic arborization of Layer III pyramidal neurons (Harper & Corbett, 1990). Moreover, studies using electrophysiology have shown that ethanol dose-dependently reduces spike activity in the PFC of an anesthetized rat (Tu et al., 2007), suggesting that ethanol-induced changes in the activity of deep-layer cortical neurons may underlie the behavior effects associated with alcohol intake.
