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Those monkeys were less willing to wait for a larger food reward and preferred the immediately available, though much smaller, reward, indicating they were more impulsive than the adult male monkeys who had never been exposed to cocaine. There was, however, no difference in the preference of female monkeys prenatally exposed to cocaine and those never exposed to the drug.

After all of the impulsivity tests were administered, the researchers ranked each monkey from least to most impulsive and compared their average impulsivity score across the four tests. They found that the male, but not female, monkeys prenatally exposed to cocaine were more impulsive overall compared to control monkeys who weren't exposed.

"A lot of the differences we saw were subtle," Hamilton said. "We've done several different kinds of impulsivity tests and, on their own, each task resulted in only slight differences. But together, they paint a really clear picture of the effects of this early cocaine exposure. The more challenging the test, the more obvious the difference between the groups was.

"The fact that we are seeing differences at all is particularly striking because this is 15 years after the monkeys were exposed in the womb to cocaine," she added. "Fifteen years is the equivalent of middle age for monkeys. The fact that fairly large differences are still turning up is fascinating."

Hamilton described the findings further, explaining that dopamine is a chemical in the brain that has been associated with drug abuse. When dopamine is released, it is broken down into homovanillic acid (HVA), which can be readily measured from a sample of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The researchers found that the less HVA present in a monkey's CSF, the less impulse control that monkey demonstrated. This finding is the first time a relat
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