Topic: brain development

Staci Bilbo explores reciprocal communication between the nervous and immune systems and how it shapes brain development. The talk considers how interactions early in life influence neural circuits supporting cognition and emotion, and extends this perspective to emerging work on communication between the lungs and brain. Bilbo also describes the research trajectory that led to these questions.

Xin Jin's lab at Scripps Research investigates how physiology and genetics converge to shape the developing brain, combining in vivo CRISPR screening with single-cell multi-omics, spatial genomics and chemical-biology tools. The Research Technician III supports studies of brain development and neurodevelopmental disease mechanisms: mouse handling, colony tracking, genotyping and tissue collection; CRISPR perturbation workflows including reagent and vector preparation; DNA/RNA extraction, PCR, qPCR and cloning; nuclei and cell preparation and library support for single-cell sequencing; mammalia

The 2026 symposium presents research by the foundation’s achievement-prize recipients. Steven A. Kushner discusses precision psychiatry and its remaining challenges; Andrew H. Miller examines an inflammatory subtype of depression; Cynthia Rogers explores how early experience affects brain development and children’s mental health; Sheena Josselyn addresses memory and engrams; and Christine Yu Moutier considers translating suicide-prevention science into action. Jeffrey Borenstein gives the welcome and Carol A. Tamminga moderates. The programme runs on 30 October from 09:30 to 12:30 EDT. Partici

The Nature versus Nurture debate has generally been considered from the lens of genome versus experience dichotomy and has dominated our thinking about behavioral individuality and personality traits. In contrast, the role of nonheritable noise during brain development in behavioral variation is understudied. Using the Drosophila melanogaster visual system, I will discuss our efforts to dissect how individuality in circuit wiring emerges during development, and how that helps generate individual behavioral variation.

Cellular crosstalk is an essential process during brain development and is influenced by numerous factors, including cell morphology, adhesion, the local extracellular matrix and secreted vesicles. Inspired by mutations associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, we focus on understanding the role of extracellular mechanisms essential for the proper development of the human brain. Therefore, we combine 2D and 3D in vitro human models to better understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in progenitor proliferation and fate, migration and maturation of excitatory and inhibitory

Digital Minds: Brain Development in the Age of Technology examines how our increasingly connected world shapes mental and cognitive health. From screen time and social media to virtual interactions, this seminar delves into the latest research on how technology influences brain development, relationships, and emotional well-being. Join us to explore strategies for harnessing technology's benefits while mitigating its potential challenges, empowering you to thrive in a digital age.

By the time a baby is born, its brain is equipped with tens of billions of intricately crafted neurons wired together to form a compact and breathtakingly efficient supercomputer. The book is meant to give a broad audience (i.e. non-neuroscientists) a sense of the step-by-step construction of a human brain as well as our current conceptual understanding of various processes involved. The book also hopes to highlight relevance of brain development to our growing understanding of cognitive and psychological variations and syndromes. The author will talk about the book including the many challeng

SES neuroscience, using imaging and other methods, has revealed generalizations of interest for population neuroscience and the study of individual differences. But beyond its scientific interest, SES is a topic of societal importance. Does neuroscience offer any useful insights for promoting socioeconomic justice and reducing the harms of poverty? In this talk I will use research from my own lab and others’ to argue that SES neuroscience has the potential to contribute to policy in this area, although its application is premature at present. I will also attempt to forecast the ways in which p

During brain development, billions of axons navigate over multiple spatial scales to reach specific targets, and so form functional circuits. However, the limited information capacity of the zygotic genome puts a strong constraint on how, and which, axonal routes can be encoded. We propose and validate a mechanism of development that can provide an efficient encoding of this global wiring task. The key principle is that successive mitoses of the neural stem cells induce a hierarchical organization of gene expression patterns in global high dimensional expression space. Provided that mitotic da

Microglia are implicated in a variety of functions in the central nervous system, ranging from shaping neural circuits during early brain development, to surveying the brain parenchyma, and providing trophic support to neurons across the entire lifespan. In neurodegeneration, microglia have been considered for long time mere bystanders, accompanying and worsening neuronal damage. However, recent evidence indicates that microglia can causally contribute to neurodegenerative diseases, and that their dysfunction can even be at the origin of the pathology. In fact, the broad range of physiological

The microbiota-gut-brain axis is emerging as a research area of increasing interest for those investigating the biological and physiological basis of brain development and behaviour during early life, adolescence & ageing. The routes of communication between the gut and brain include the vagus nerve, the immune system, tryptophan metabolism, via the enteric nervous system or by way of microbial metabolites such as short chain fatty acids. Studies in animal models have shown that the development of an appropriate stress response is dependent on the microbiota. Developmentally, a variety of fact

The symposium will start with Prof Cooper who will present “From neural tube to neocortex: the role of adhesion in maintaining stem cell morphology and function”. Then, Dr Tsai will talk about “In the search for new genes involved in brain development and disorders”. Dr Del Pino will deal with the “Regulation of intrinsic network activity during area patterning in the cerebral cortex”, and Dr Wang will present “Modelling Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Flies”.

While the diversity of neurons in the adult mammalian brain is staggering, these cells emerge from a seemingly limited set of progenitors during development. This begs the question of how complexity emerges from a finite number of elements during dynamic biological processes. Here, I will discuss recent work from my laboratory addressing relationships between genetic diversity and connectivity in single-cell types, and how progenitor diversity may constrain adult brain cellular states during normal and abnormal brain development.

Neurodevelopmental disorders are a group of very heterogeneous diseases in which the development of the central nervous system is defective. In neurodevelopmental disorders defective brain development translates into aberrant brain function, which can manifest for example as impaired learning, motor function, or social interaction. Despites years of investigation in animal models and clinical research on neurodevelopmental disorders, there are currently no approved pharmacological treatments for core symptoms of the vast majority of them. Here, I will share some recent work (but also some appr

During brain development, neurons are born in specialized niches and migrate to target regions where they assemble to form the circuits that underlie mammalian behaviour. During their journey, neurons follow cell-intrinsic, genetic programs transmitted by their mother cells but also environmental cues, which together drive their maturation. Here, focusing on the neocortex, I will discuss recent findings from our laboratory in which we untangle and manipulate the programs at play in progenitors and their daughter neurons to better understand the emergence of cellular diversity in the developing

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 transplantation of developing organs as well as pushing boundaries of environmental conditions.Here, we explore the outcome of Drosophila melanogaster brain development at hyper-gravity 10^2 to 10^3 times greater than conventional gravity on earth. Remarkably, Drosophila pupae ful

Chromatin remodelling plays an essential role in development, for instance by controlling gene expression during cell differentiation. Mutations of chromatin remodellers are often implicated in developmental diseases such as CHARGE syndrome, in which a heterozygous mutation of the chromatin remodeller CHD7 is the major driver of the disease. To investigate the role of Chd7 during brain development, we used a dorsal telencephalon-specific Chd7 loss-of-function mouse model and discovered Chd7 acts as a multi-lineage coordinator. Histological analysis of Chd7 mutant mice shows that upon ablation

Life experiences wield particular influence over brain development during restricted time windows (i.e., critical periods), when the brain is more responsive to environmental stimuli. Positive experiences during critical periods lead to healthy brain wiring and development of proper behavioral skills. Conversely, diverse traumatic life experiences (e.g., physical/sexual abuse, prolonged hospitalization, warfare) can damage the brain structure and connectivity, increasing the risk for neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g. depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention-deficit/hyperac

Age-related declines in sensory, motor, and cognitive abilities are a major risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases. Dietary restriction (DR) can slow or postpone these changes, improving memory, learning, and cognitive abilities, but may not always yield positive results. In this study, we examined the impact of 30% DR (70% of ad libitum daily intake) during adolescence on the short-term (STM) and long-term (LTM) memory performance in 6- and 18-month-old female Wistar rats. The effects of DR were examined in three onsets and durations: DR1 (28th to 35th day of life), DR2 (35th to 42nd day

Plant homeodomain finger gene 6 (PHF6) is a highly conserved chromatin associated protein that is important for neurodevelopment and hematopoiesis. Inherited or de novo mutations in the PHF6 gene cause Börjeson–Forssman–Lehmann syndrome (BFLS), a rare X-linked neurodevelopmental and endocrine disorder. Patients with BFLS present with intellectual disability (ID), which affects cognitive functioning and adaptive behaviour. To progress our understanding of how PHF6 mutations affect the nervous system in BFLS, we studied the impact of deletion of the Phf6 gene on brain development in conditional

Brain L-serine is critical for neurodevelopment and is thought to be synthesized solely from glucose. In contrast, we found that the influx of L-serine across the blood–brain barrier (BBB) is essential for brain development. We identified the endothelial Slc38a5, previously thought to be a glutamine transporter, as an L-serine transporter expressed at the BBB in early postnatal life. Young Slc38a5 knockout (KO) mice exhibit developmental alterations and a decrease in brain L-serine and D-serine, without changes in serum or liver amino acids. Slc38a5-KO brains exhibit accumulation of neurotoxic

Functional Ultrasound imaging (fUS) has recently demonstrated the feasibility of assessing functional connectivity (fC) in neonates at bedside1, facilitating brain monitoring in this vulnerable population. Here, we validate fUS in a larger cohort of preterm neonates to investigate fC in a music exposure paradigm for which MRI studies have shown improved structural and functional maturation2,3. Our study involved n=21 preterm neonates (27.6±2.2 gestational week (GW)) born at Geneva University Hospitals : a control group with standard care (n=10) and a second group repeatedly exposed (2 to 3 tim

Brain development is the most rapid during pregnancy and early neonatal months. While prior research has shown that electrophysiological activity of the brain undergoes changes across infancy to adulthood, the role of gestation duration on electrophysiological activity remains largely unknown.This cross-sectional study used data from 73 neonates (postnatal age 1–5 days, 40 females) and 56 toddlers (postnatal age 2.9–3.2 years, 28 females). EEG power spectra were parameterized using Fitting Oscillations and One-Over-F (FOOOF). Multilevel models were employed to neonates, considering different d

Human brain development is affected by very preterm (VP) birth. For example, cortical thickness (CT) is aberrant on average in groups of VP neonates, children, and adults. However, distinct postmortem findings of severely impacted preterm neonates, diverse behavioral outcomes of preterm survivors, and the spatially widespread nature of hypoxia-driven pathomechanisms after VP birth imply a regionally variable and individually heterogenous impact of VP birth on brain development. We hypothesized that CT follows this pattern, from birth to adulthood, mediated by the same cell types, and relevant