Impaired eye blinks tied to fetal alcohol syndrome

Children exposed to alcohol in the womb have impaired eye blinks compared with children not exposed to alcohol. Children exposed to alcohol before birth may develop fetal alcohol syndrome—a collection of birth defects and developmental problems that can include delayed growth, significant learning disabilities and abnormal facial features. However, not all children with fetal alcohol syndrome are born with the distinctive facial anomalies of the condition. Researchers in America studied 98 five-year-old children in South Africa who underwent eye blink testing. This area was selected because of its known high incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome. Overall, 64 of the children were born to heavy drinking mothers, including 12 who met criteria for fetal alcohol syndrome and 18 who met criteria for partial fetal alcohol syndrome. None of the children with fetal alcohol syndrome achieved normal eye blink conditioning (EBC) compared with 75 per cent of control children. Moreover, among children with less severe alcohol-related exposures, it usually took more test sessions to achieve normal EBC than it did for controls. In addition, the deficits in EBC were not related to IQ or found in non-exposed children with microcephaly (small head size), which are often confounding factors. The findings clearly link one brain area to the learning deficits experienced by children with fetal alcohol syndrome, whether or not they have physical manifestations of the condition, and thus can provide a basis for the development of remediation programmes. Also, since normal human infants reach functional capacity on the EBC response by five months of age, and since the EBC deficit appears to be so sensitive, infants at risk can be identified early in life, and intervention programmes can begin when the plasticity of the brain is greatest and have the strongest effect.