Publications by authors named "E Van de Water"

Aim: To quantify regional subcortical brain volume anomalies in youth with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), assess the relative sensitivity and specificity of abnormal volumes in FASD vs. a comparison group, and examine associations with cognitive function.

Method: Participants: 47 children with FASD and 39 typically-developing comparison participants, ages 8-17 years, who completed physical evaluations, cognitive and behavioral testing, and an MRI brain scan.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to improve the measurement of childhood inhibitory control by using an item response theory (IRT) approach that integrates multiple neurodevelopmental tasks instead of analyzing them separately.
  • Data was collected from a cohort in Mexico consisting of 533 participants, and an inhibitory control scale was developed using various tasks to assess the impact of pre/post-natal lead exposure on children's development.
  • Findings indicated that increased lead exposure, both from umbilical cord blood and at the age of four, was associated with lower inhibitory control scores in children aged 8-10, confirming the relevance of IRT in environmental epidemiology research.
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Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) are among the most common neurodevelopmental disorders and substantially impact public health. FASD can affect people of all races and ethnicities; however, there are important racial and ethnic disparities in alcohol-exposed pregnancy prevention, assessment and diagnosis of FASD, and interventions to support individuals with FASD and their families. In this article we use the Dis/Ability Studies and Critical Race Theory (Dis/Crit) framework to structure the exploration of disparities and possible solutions within these three areas (prevention, diagnosis, intervention).

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Objective: To evaluate the use of a large magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) normative dataset to quantify structural brain anomalies that may improve diagnostic sensitivity for atypical brain volume in youth with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).

Study Design: Participants included 48 children with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) and 43 controls, ages 8-17 years, from the longitudinal Collaborative Initiative on FASD s. Recently published lifespan brain charts were used to quantify participants' (per)centile for brain volumes (cortical and subcortical gray matter and cortical white matter), providing an index of (dis)similarity to typically developing individuals of the same age and sex.

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Temporal discounting (TD) tasks measure the preference for immediate rewards over larger delayed rewards and have been widely used to study impulsivity in children and adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Relatively impulsive individuals tend to show high inconsistency in their choices, which makes it difficult to determine commonly used TD outcome measures (e.g.

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