An atlas that shows a developing brain

New route for researchers to identify neurodevelopmental disorders

Los Angeles, Dec. 8: Scientists, including one of Indian origin, have created an atlas of the developing human brain, mapping gene expressions and networks that contribute to building the most complex of human organs.

The findings, published in Science, may help researchers around the world understand the causes of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, intellectual disability and schizophrenia.

“It’s critically important to be able to look at questions of brain development in real human tissue when you’re trying to study human disease,” said Arnold Kriegstein, a professor at University of California, San Francisco.

“Many of the insights we’re able to gain with this data can’t be seen in the mouse,” he said.

“By analysing this dataset in new ways, we were able to discover early molecular distinctions across areas and over time that begin to specify the astonishing diversity of neurons in the cerebral cortex,” said Aparna Bhaduri, a post-doctoral researcher at UCSF at the time of the study.

Researchers had previously developed techniques for analysing distinctive patterns of DNA activity in individual cells extracted from human brain tissue. This time, they explored how specific classes of neurons and stem cells in the developing brain contribute to normal brain growth and neurodevelopmental disease.

They have begun to build a comprehensive, opensource atlas of gene expression across the developing brain, which they hope will serve as a resource for other scientists.