Prenatal Tobacco Exposure Can Shrink the Amygdala

Prenatal exposure to maternal cigarette smoking is a well-established risk factor for obesity, and one reason why may be because it decreases the size of the amygdala in the brain. So reported Zdenka Pausova, M.D., an associate professor of physiology at the University of Toronto, and colleagues recently in the Archives of General Psychiatry, after studying some 400 adolescents. And more distressing news about the effects of tobacco on the brain comes from a study recently reported in Brain Imaging and Behavior in which David Bennett, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry at Drexel University,...

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Published By: Psychiatric News - 5 days ago