On a go/no-go task O'Brien et al. [44] found that despite similar inhibitory behavioral performance across trials, children with prenatal alcohol exposure displayed greater neural activation in several frontal and parietal regions during response inhibition, which is similar to a previous report [43]. However, the authors also found that when a predictive cue signaled the need to inhibit a response, alcohol-exposed subjects displayed poorer ‘go’ response accuracy and a more conservative response bias, as well as reduced activation in left pre- and postcentral gyri. The authors suggest that the alcohol-exposed children were not utilizing the cue-signal to the same extent as controls and that deficits in nonverbal learning may contribute to the poorer cued-trial performance.
