Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 23, 2025

Neural Tube Closure in Mouse Whole Embryo Culture
Published on: October 21, 2011
Junctional Neural Tube Defect
Sebastian Eibach1,2,3, Dachling Pang4,5
1Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Abstract:
Junctional neurulation represents the most recent adjunct to the well-known sequential embryological processes of primary and secondary neurulation. While its exact molecular processes, occurring at the end of primary and the beginning of secondary neurulation, are still being actively investigated, its pathological counterpart -junctional neural tube defect (JNTD)- had been described in 2017 based on three patients whose well-formed secondary neural tube, the conus, is widely separated from its corresponding primary neural tube and functionally disconnected from corticospinal control from above. Several other cases conforming to this bizarre neural tube arrangement have since appeared in the literature, reinforcing the validity of this entity. The cardinal clinical, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological features of JNTD, and the hypothesis of its embryogenetic mechanism, form part of this review.
Related Concept Videos
Neurulation
Notch Signaling Pathway
The Notch gene came into the limelight in 1914 after the discovery that its mutation in Drosophila melanogaster leads to a serrated (or "notched") wing margin phenotype. It was not...
Nondisjunction
Nondisjunction
Mitral Stenosis I: Introduction
Neural Regulation

