Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Alcohol consumption during pregnancy commonly causes brain injury in the offspring that is persistent and damaging, making every day tasks difficult. The term 'Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders' (FASD) encompasses the full spectrum of adverse outcomes resulting from prenatal alcohol exposure. It is important to identify brain injury resulting from alcohol exposure at an early age so that the benefits of drug and other interventions can be the maximized. Identifying individuals with FASD remains a significant clinical challenge, especially when there is absence of confirmed maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy, the characteristic facial features are absent, and subtle cognitive deficits are the primary symptom. There is a clear need to develop tools to reliably and objectively measure brain injury resulting from prenatal exposure to alcohol. Ideally, these tools need to be mobile and easy to use, so they are useful for the screening, diagnosis and long-term evaluation of various therapeutic interventions. When viewing video, our eyes are drawn to attention-grabbing stimuli. As people age the brain circuitry involved in attention changes, hence our viewing patterns change. The 'attention areas' of the brain are affected in children with FASD and attention problems are measurable with neuropsychological tests. We suspect the viewing pattern of children with FASD will be different from typically-developing children because of the attentional differences between the two groups. Since the method does not require instruction or child compliance, we will be able to measure attentional differences in the video viewing patterns of 2 and 3 year old children. If we are able to differentiate between children with FASD and typically-developing children, this method can be utilized as a novel research and screening tool for assessing the brain injury and resulting cognitive and neurobehavioural deficits associated with prenatal alcohol exposure.