Giving birth to new insights into brain development and disease

"A new study by Tomohisa Toda and colleagues, published today in Developmental Cell, has contributed novel insights into how the process of birth can regulate specific aspects of brain development. This in turn may affect the way genes and environment interact in the healthy and diseased brain....
"Overall, adverse early life experience is thought to increase an individual's susceptibility to mental health disorders. Interactions between serotonin and environmental factors such as stressful events have already been suggested as triggers for depression and anxiety disorders in vulnerable subjects.

"This new paper has implications for healthy brain development as well as environmental factors affecting disposition for particular neurological and psychiatric disorders. Further studies need to be done to establish whether particular types of birth, such as premature delivery and caesarean section, alter brain development and predisposition to specific brain disorders...."

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-birth-insights-brain-disease.html

Toda, et al. (2013). "Birth Regulates the Initiation of Sensory Map Formation through Serotonin Signaling." Developmental Cell. Abstract.

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