In clinical studies, prenatal cocaine exposure has been associated with a wide range of subtle effects including small but significant decreases in fetal growth, increased rates of intrauterine growth retardation, early impairments during both the neonatal period and infancy in arousal, self-regulation, acoustic cry characteristics, and motor development. More recently, long-term problems have been identified in children prospectively followed through the age of 15 years, including deficits in intelligence, language skills, executive functioning, impulse control and attention, and evidence of internalizing and externalizing behavioral traits23-25. For the MRI studies, the cohorts of children with and without prenatal exposure to cocaine are determined based on self-report and drug screening (e.g., urine-toxicology, hair radioimmunoassay, meconium analysis). Here we review what T1-weighted anatomical MRI, DTI, fMRI and MRS studies in these children have told us about the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure.
