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Sunday, October 4, 2009

Sexually Dimorphic Effects of Alcohol Exposure during Development on the Processing of Social Cues
Alcohol and Alcoholism Advance Access published online on September 19, 2009

The study used an animal model of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) to investigate the impact of alcohol exposure during a period equivalent to all three trimesters in humans on social recognition memory. It was hypothesized that the effects on specific aspects of social recognition memory would be sexually dimorphic.

The results suggest that ethanol exposure during development caused a deficit in memory duration but not encoding in males and a deficit in encoding but not memory duration in females. The deficit in ethanol-exposed females may be related to changes in oxytocin receptors in the amygdala. .


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