The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Brain Health and Clinical Neuroscience
Volume 19 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1531803
This article is part of the Research Topic Impacts of Substance Use/Exposure on Early Brain View all 3 articles
The Association between Neighborhood Environment, Prenatal Exposure to Alcohol and Tobacco, and Structural Brain Development
Provisionally accepted- Program in Public Health, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, United States
Prenatal alcohol and tobacco exposure affects child brain development. Less is known about how neighborhood environment (built, institutional, and social) may be associated with structural brain development and whether prenatal exposure to alcohol or tobacco may modify this relationship. The current study aimed to examine whether neighborhood environment is associated with brain volume at age 9 to 11, and whether prenatal exposure to alcohol or tobacco modifies this relationship. Baseline data from Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study was analyzed (N = 7887). Neighborhood environment was characterized by ten variables from the linked external dataset. Prenatal alcohol and tobacco exposures were dichotomized based on the developmental history questionnaire. Bilateral volumes of three regions of interests (hippocampal, parahippocampal, and entorhinal) were examined as outcomes. High residential area deprivation was associated with smaller right hippocampal volume. Prenatal alcohol exposure was associated with larger volume in left parahippocampal and hippocampal regions, while prenatal tobacco exposure was associated with smaller volumes in bilateral parahippocampal, right entorhinal, and right hippocampal regions. In children without prenatal tobacco exposure, high residential area deprivation was associated with smaller right hippocampal volumes. In contrast, neighborhood environment was not significantly associated with brain volumes in children with prenatal tobacco exposure. In summary, neighborhood environment plays a role in child brain development. This relationship may differ by prenatal tobacco exposure. Future studies on prenatal tobacco exposure may need to consider how postnatal neighborhood environment interacts with the teratogenic effect.
Keywords: prenatal alcohol exposure1, prenatal tobacco exposure2, neighborhood environment3, neuroimaging4, child brain development5
Received: 20 Nov 2024; Accepted: 06 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xia and Vieira. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yingjing Xia, Program in Public Health, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, California, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.