Developmental Biology ePosters

Brain circuits in mouse pups develop and mature extensively during the first few weeks of life. During early postnatal development, sensory cortices experience patterned spontaneous activity which is known to refine neural connectivity, preparing the animal to engage in sensorimotor tasks immediately upon ear and eye…

Spontaneous activity in young ferrets (p22) is organised into modular, low-dimensional patterns across multiple cortical areas [1]. In the following two weeks (p22-43), these activity patterns undergo a transition similar in all areas, and show a gradual increase in dimensionality in most areas, suggesting an…

The emergence of spontaneous activity in the form of synchronized bursting events (SBE) is considered to play a crucial role in activity-dependent development of neuronal networks. As inhibition matures, the spatiotemporal structure of activity becomes increasingly influenced by the balance between excitation and…

Interacting with the environment to process sensory information, generate perceptions, and shape goal-directed behavior engages neural networks in brain areas with highly varied representations, ranging from unimodal sensory cortices to higher-order association areas. These networks form and undergo considerable and…

Body size varies across 21 orders of magnitudes in the animal kingdom [1]. In contrast to most organs, which scale through the proliferation of dividing cells of similar size, brains expand by modulating the size of non-dividing neuronal cells to innervate space during development [2]. Consequently, there is a notable…

Early postnatal development is a critical period for the establishment of functional brain networks. While extensive research has focused on local circuit maturation, the emergence and evolution of long-range communication between brain regions has received less attention. Here we investigate the developmental…

Growth-factor receptor bound protein 10 (GRB10) is a signal adapter protein encoded by an imprinted gene, with roles in growth control, cellular proliferation, and insulin signalling. Grb10 has a unique, tissue-specific imprinted expression; the paternal copy being expressed in the CNS, whereas the maternal copy is…

Dopamine-dependent cyclic AMP accumulation occurs via activation of D1-like receptors since early development of the chicken retina. Cyclic AMP is an ubiquitous second messenger that regulates several physiological processes including neuronal survival and differentiation. The mTOR pathway is a crucial pathway linking…

Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder due to the loss of various neuronal populations, including the GABAergic and the dopaminergic systems in the striatum and in the midbrain. The resulting degeneration of the nigro-striatal circuit is responsible for a severe neurological…

Xenopus frog metamorphosis offers a unique opportunity to study motor circuit changes as tadpoles transition from tail-based undulatory swimming to synchronous limb-based movements. Xenopus motor circuits change at a cellular level and generate different motor patterns over development, but the mechanisms driving the…

Background: Folate supplementation throughout pregnancy is recommended to support foetal and early postnatal brain development. The exact effect of folate on cerebellar development is unknown. This study looked at how maternal folate consumption impacts the structural development of the offspring's cerebellar…

CYP2C19 is mainly, a liver enzyme that metabolizes psychotropic compounds, however, it is also expressed in the fetal brain. Transgenic knock-in mice carrying the human CYP2C19 gene show the same expression pattern of this enzyme as humans. This study aims to characterize the motor function and brain morphological…

The evolution and development of all organisms on earth relies on near-constant gravity. Experimental manipulations can create developmental conditions that have never been encountered during evolution, yet reveal developmental mechanisms based on informative phenotypic outcomes; classically, such experiments include…

What role does phenotypic complexity play in the systems-level function of an embodied agent? The organismal phenotype is a topologically complex structure that interacts with a genotype, developmental physics, and an informational environment. Using this observation as inspiration, we utilize a type of embodied agent…

Cognitive processing requires directed interactions between several brain areas of the limbic system, such as the hippocampus (HP) and lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC). They are modulated by multiple sensory systems. During development, the olfactory system might have a particular impact on these areas in mice that at…

During mammalian neural development, mitotic cells sense local cues and morphogenic gradients to form complex and coherent processing systems, such as the cerebral cortex, that contains billions of neurons classified into different cell types. We use agent-based simulations of cellular growth and differentiation to…

The upper visual layers of the mouse superior colliculus (SC) exhibit an orientation preference map (OPM) with a retinotopy-based concentric pattern (Ahmadlou and Heimel, 2015; Feinberg and Meister, 2015; but see Chen et al., 2020). The underlying developmental mechanisms that give rise to this concentric OPM in the…