Over the course of pregnancy, the structure of the brain will change as it grows and begins to form the characteristic folds that designate distinct brain regions. 6īy the ninth week, the brain appears as a small, smooth structure. Neural progenitor cells begin to divide and differentiate into neurons and glia, the two cell types that form the basis of the nervous system. The fetal brain begins to develop during the third week of gestation. Human brain development starts soon after conception and continues into early adulthood. By age 25, it typically is fully developed. By 6 years of age, the brain has reached 90% of its adult volume. All the structures continue to develop throughout the fetal period and early childhood. By the end of the embryonic period (gestational week 10), the basics of the neural system are established. The process that will ultimately give rise to the connectome begins about 25 days after conception, when the neural tube begins to form.
5 The findings could one day provide avenues for novel neuroprotective strategies. In addition, understanding the origins of neurodevelopment-and where brain function goes awry-may provide new insights on the impact of environmental exposures. However, fMRI has also provided a new level of access to the developing brain. Finally, technical issues potentially result in artifacts that may not be recognized as errors. Movement causes problems with data analysis and interpretation-and babies and fetuses are notoriously wriggly unless asleep or sedated. The images generated by the technology often must be manipulated to correct for distortion and to scale brain scans to a consistent, comparable template. With these advances, they have also begun to unlock some of the signatures of abnormal brain development.įMRI is not perfect.
In the past decade, advances in a neuroimaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have offered researchers an unprecedented look at how those connections form before and shortly after birth. As neuroscientist Sebastian Seung subtitled his 2012 book Connectome, our neural wiring makes us who we are. Some researchers hypothesize that these connections encode essential aspects of personality, behavior, cognition, and memory. 2 Scientists call this signaling spaghetti the “connectome,” 1 and it makes up a blueprint of the trillions of neural connections in the brain. 1 Billions of threadlike fibers crisscross the brain, forming labyrinthine networks that relay messages between different brain regions. From autism to schizophrenia, many brain disorders have long been thought to arise from problems with the connections among nerve cells in the brain.
0 kommentar(er)
