The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Brain Volume in Children and Adolescents With Prenatal Alcohol Exposure

The positive relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and cognitive performance is mediated, in part, by differences in brain structure in typically developing youth. Associations between brain regions that relate to SES overlap with brain regions known to be sensitive to prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE). Animal models demonstrate that PAE attenuates neural and cognitive benefits of early life enrichment. However, whether or not environmental factors related to SES are associated with brain development in youth affected by PAE remains unknown in humans. T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were obtained in participants with PAE and compared to age- and sex- matched Controls ( = 197, 48% with PAE, 44% girls, 6.5-17.7 years old). General linear modeling was utilized to examine associations between SES and subcortical brain volumes for youth with PAE compared to Controls. Group by SES interactions were observed within the hippocampus (HPC), nucleus accumbens (NAc) and ventral diencephalon (vDC) (corrected values