Effects of Prenatal Cocaine Exposure on Human Brain Structures

Xiangchuan Chen¹, Claire D. Coles², Mary E. Lynch², Zhihao Li¹, Xiaoping Hu¹

Investigation of brain structural outcomes induced by prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) was performed by automatically segmenting the cerebral cortex and sub-cortical structures into various regions of interest (ROIs) with Freesurfer on T1-weighted images. No significant PCE effect was found on the volumes of sub-cortical ROIs. In contrast, the entire left and right cerebral cortices and a few cortical ROIs exhibited reduced volume by PCE. In addition, a gender difference in PCE effect was found, suggesting that female may be more vulnerable to PCE than male. Thus, the gender factor should be considered in future studies in this field.