Working with colleagues at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and elsewhere, our experts recently published research suggesting that an early screen looking at certain changes in a baby’s heart rate pattern, called cardiac orienting response (COR), may be a better early predictor for developmental delay following prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) that standardized developmental testing. Why is this important? The effects of PAE on a child’s development often are not diagnosed until the child begins to struggle in school, and standardized tests for developmental delay are often costly and labor-intensive. An easy and effective screening tool like COR could make it possible to identify and treat these children much earlier in life while their brains are still developing. The study was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

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