brain development

Researchers have successfully completed a full-genome RNAi screen in neurons, showing what types of genes are necessary for brain development.

Neuroscientists have demonstrated for the first time in living animals that insulin receptors in the brain can initiate signaling that regulates both the structure and function of neural circuits.

The finding suggests a significant role for this class of receptors and perhaps for insulin, not only in brain development, but also in cognition and in pathological processes in which cognition is impaired, as in Alzheimer's disease, for example.

Exposure of the developing brain to cocaine can cause neurological and behavioral abnormalities in babies born to mothers who use the drug during pregnancy.

Researchers -- who note that cocaine use occurs in several hundred thousand pregnancies per year in the United States alone -- investigated the mechanism of cocaine's effect on fetal brain development.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has discovered a new form of intellectual disability involving mental retardation along with the eye defect retinitis pigmentosa.

CAMH also discovered the previously unidentified gene that causes this disorder, CC2D2A. This scientific advance will help understand the developmental and biological processes involved in brain development, and may help identify ways to diagnose and treat intellectual disabilities.

Scientists have found evidence to suggest an important role for vitamin D in brain development and function, and that supplementation for groups chronically low in vitamin D is warranted.

Vitamin D is present in only a few foods (e.g., fatty fish), and is also added to fortified milk, but our supply typically comes mostly from exposure to ultraviolet rays in sunlight.

Researchers have uncovered genetic errors that may shed light on the causes of schizophrenia. The scientists found that deletions and duplications of DNA are more common in people with the mental disorder, and that many of those errors occur in genes related to brain development and neurological function.

In the earliest days of brain development, the brain's first cells -- neuroepithelial stem cells -- divide continuously, producing a population of cells that eventually evolves into the various cells of the fully formed brain.

Now, scientists have identified a gene that, in mice, is critical for these stem cells to divide correctly.

Without it, they fail to divide, and die.

Researchers have uncovered genetic errors that may shed light on the causes of schizophrenia. The scientists found that deletions and duplications of DNA are more common in people with the mental disorder, and that many of those errors occur in genes related to brain development and neurological function.

Schizophrenia emerges from an altered pattern of brain development, and researchers continue to search for the genes that cause the brain to develop along a path that ultimately leads to schizophrenia.