The probability of the development of neuropsychic disorders is determined even before birth
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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The different activity of genes that control the formation of the brain in an embryo determines the likelihood of neuropsychiatric disorders, and also has a decisive influence on the difference in the architecture of the male and female brain.
On the formation of billions of nerve cells and a variety of connections between them in the human genome, 86% of all genes are allocated. The work on the role of each "nervous" gene in the formation of the brain has been going on for a long time. But it is not enough to know which gene is responsible for that. It is also necessary to take into account that genes can exhibit different activity depending on different situations, on where they are located, and at what stage of development the nervous system has entered.
Scientists from the Yale University (USA) conducted a large-scale study to find out the space-time features of the genes that determine the shape of the human brain. The processing of 1,340 samples of nervous tissue taken at various stages of human development, from a 40-day embryo to an 80-year-old man, was performed. As a result, a huge size picture of genetic activity, including 1.9 billion parameters, was obtained.
An analysis of such data, published in the journal Nature, served as the basis for a multitude of conclusions, but among the most curious, the following may be noted. Of course, the genes associated with the emergence of schizophrenia and autism could not fall into the area of interest of researchers. Symptoms of both diseases are believed to be recognizable in the early years of a person's life or in the early stages of growing up. The results of the analysis of gene activity completely coincide with this: it was shown that these genes are included before birth. From the work of these genes on the prenatal stage it depends whether a person will have schizophrenia in the future or not.
Also, with the embryonic development of a person, a gender difference in the activity of genes begins to appear. Scientists believed that the difference between a man and a woman would be limited only by genes located in the Y chromosome. But it turned out that many genes responsible for the formation of the brain and available in both sexes work in their own way in men and women, and this difference is palpable even before birth. Simply put, gender differences in the architecture of the brain, as well as a predisposition to neuropsychiatric diseases, is mostly formed at the stage of fetal development.
In this case, of course, we must remember that the work did not take into account the influence of exogenous factors, which can inhibit the development of the same schizophrenia. Throughout life, external factors are able to direct the action of other genes that will resist the first that has not worked well in the embryo. As for gender differences, it is extremely difficult to imagine such external factors that would reduce the "gender" features, not "no".