title: Prenatal and Adolescent Tobacco Exposure Associated With Gender-Specific Audio/Visual Damage

Prenatal and adolescent exposure to nicotine exerts gender-specific deleterious effects on auditory and visual attention, according to a study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

Leslie K. Jacobsen, MD, and colleagues at Yale University and other institutions examined auditory and visual selective and divided attention in 181 male and female adolescent smokers and nonsmokers with and without prenatal exposure to maternal smoking. They found that exposure to tobacco smoke during prenatal or adolescent development was associated with reductions in auditory and visual attention performance accuracy in women, especially those who had prenatal exposure. Among males, combined exposure was associated with marked deficits in auditory attention, suggesting greater vulnerability of neurocircuitry supporting auditory attention to insult stemming from developmental exposure to tobacco smoke in men than in women.


Source: Neuropsychopharmacology

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