\u201cThese results suggest that prenatal brain development may be a very important influence on psychiatric risk later in life<\/strong>,\u201d said Rebecca C. Knickmeyer, PhD, lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychiatry in the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. The study was published online by the journal Cerebral Cortex<\/em> on Jan. 3, 2013.<\/p>\n The study included 272 infants who received MRI scans at UNC Hospitals shortly after birth<\/strong>. The DNA of each was tested for 10 common variations in 7 genes that have been linked to brain structure in adults. These genes have also been implicated in conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, Alzheimer\u2019s disease, anxiety disorders and depression.<\/p>\n For some polymorphisms \u2013 such as a variation in the APOE gene which is associated with Alzheimer\u2019s disease \u2013 the brain changes in infants looked very similar to brain changes found in adults with the same variants<\/strong>, Knickmeyer said. \u201cThis could stimulate an exciting new line of research focused on preventing onset of illness through very early intervention in at-risk individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n But this was not true for every polymorphism included in the study<\/strong>, said John H. Gilmore, MD, senior author of the study and Thad & Alice Eure Distinguished Professor and Vice Chair for Research and Scientific Affairs in the UNC Department of Psychiatry.<\/p>\n For example, the study included two variants in the DISC1 gene. For one of these variants, known as rs821616, the infant brains looked very similar to the brains of adults with this variant<\/strong>. But there was no such similarity between infant brains and adult brains for the other variant, rs6675281.<\/p>\n \u201cThis suggests that the brain changes associated with this gene variant aren\u2019t present at birth but develop later in life, perhaps during puberty<\/strong>,\u201d Gilmore said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s fascinating that different variants in the same gene have such unique effects in terms of when they affect brain development,\u201d said Knickmeyer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In addition to Knickmeyer and Gilmore, authors of the study were Jiaping Wang, PhD; Hongtu Zhu, PhD; Xiujuan Geng, PhD; Sandra Woolson, MPh;\u00a0 Robert M. Hamer, PhD; Thomas Konneker, BA; Weili Lin, PhD; and Martin Styner, PhD. All are at UNC except Konneker, who was at UNC but is now a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the UNC School of Medicine press release via HealthCanal: Some brain changes that are found in adults with common gene variants linked to disorders such as Alzheimer\u2019s disease, schizophrenia,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[195,42,194,49],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9722"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9739,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9722\/revisions\/9739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"brain](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/brain_scan2.jpg\")
Some brain changes that are found in adults with common gene variants linked to disorders such as Alzheimer\u2019s disease, schizophrenia, and autism can also be seen in the brain scans of newborns<\/strong>.<\/p>\n