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Impact of prenatal environmental stress on cortical development

Seiji Ishii1, Kazue Hashimoto-Torii2

  • 1Center for Neuroscience Research, Children's National Medical Center, Children's Research Institute Washington, DC, USA.

Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
|June 16, 2015
PubMed

Insights

Prenatal environmental stress can disrupt brain development, increasing the risk for neuropsychiatric disorders like autism and schizophrenia. Understanding these molecular mechanisms is key to developing future interventions.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Biology
  • Environmental Health

Background:

  • Prenatal exposure to environmental stressors impacts developing brains.
  • Subtle disruptions in the cerebral cortex can lead to cognitive and memory impairments.
  • This increases susceptibility to neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism, ADHD, and schizophrenia.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review the molecular mechanisms underlying pathological cortical development due to prenatal environmental stress.
  • To highlight shared mechanisms across different stressors.
  • To explore indirect impacts from extracortical tissues and gene-environment interactions.

Main Methods:

  • Review of recent studies utilizing animal models.
  • Analysis of human specimens.
  • Investigation using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

Main Results:

  • Identified shared molecular mechanisms affected by various environmental stressors.
  • Demonstrated indirect impacts of extracortical tissues on cortical development.
  • Highlighted the interplay between prenatal stress and genetic predisposition in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Conclusions:

  • Environmental factors during prenatal development significantly influence brain structure and function.
  • Understanding these molecular pathways is crucial for addressing prenatal environment-linked neuropsychiatric disorders.
  • Further research is needed to overcome challenges in comprehending environmentally disturbed molecular expressions in cortical maldevelopment.

Keywords:
alcoholautismcortical developmentgene-environment interactioniPS cellsmaternal immune activationprenatal environmental stressschizophrenia

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