1
Department of Kinesiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
2
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
3
Harlow Center for Biological Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
4
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
5
Department of Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
6
Department of Physics, Minnesota State University, Mankato, MN, USA
Sensory processing disorder, characterized by over- or under-responsivity to non-noxious environmental stimuli, is a common but poorly understood disorder. We examined the role of prenatal alcohol exposure, serotonin transporter gene polymorphic region variation (rh5-HTTLPR), and striatal dopamine (DA) function on behavioral measures of sensory responsivity to repeated non-noxious sensory stimuli in macaque monkeys. Results indicated that early gestation alcohol exposure induced behavioral under-responsivity to environmental stimuli in monkeys carrying the short (s) rh5-HTTLPR allele compared to both early-exposed monkeys homozygous for the long (l) allele and monkeys from middle-to-late exposed pregnancies and controls, regardless of genotype. Moreover, prenatal timing of alcohol exposure altered the relationship between sensory scores and DA D2R availability. In early-exposed monkeys, a positive relationship was shown between sensory scores and DA D2R availability, with low or blunted DA function associated with under-responsive sensory function. The opposite pattern was found for the middle-to-late gestation alcohol-exposed group. These findings raise questions about how the timing of prenatal perturbation and genotype contributes to effects on neural processing and possibly alters neural connections.