In general the neural anomolies associated with FASD measured with neuroimaging technologies account for only a small proportion of variance that contributes to cognitive or behavioral disruption. These complex relationships involve genetic factors, environmantal experience, and timing of developmental events, among others, and converge to affect the whole brain and resultant behavior. As a majority of the neuroimaging studies to-date are cross-sectional, it is not possible to determine whether the observed brain changes are the cause or product of disrupted cogntition and behavior, or whether the observed brain/behavior relationships in FASD vary together due to some other factor(s).
