New research at LIFE – Faculty of Life Sciences at University of Copenhagen shows that vitamin C deficiency may impair the mental development of new-born babies.

A research team at the Stowers Institute has discovered how the expression of one of the Hox master control genes is regulated in a specific segment of the developing brain. The findings provide important insight into how and where the brain develops some of its unique and important structures.

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers have discovered how the expression of the Sonic hedgehog gene is regulated during brain development and how mutations that alter this process cause brain malformations. The results appear online this month in Nature Genetics.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Brandeis University have successfully completed a full-genome RNAi screen in neurons, showing what types of genes are necessary for brain development. Details of the screen and its novel methodology are published July 4th in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.

Although behavioral studies clearly indicate that exposure to drugs, alcohol and tobacco in utero is bad for a baby's developing brain, specific anatomic brain effects have been hard to tease out in humans. Often users don't limit themselves to one substance, and demographic factors like poverty can also influence brain development.

New recommendations published by international experts in the Journal of Perinatal Medicine state that infant formula should include DHA omega-3 and AA omega-6 to guarantee a correct eye and brain development.

In the earliest days of brain development, the brain’s first cells – neuroepithelial stem cells -- divide continuously, producing a population of cells that eventually evolves into the various cells of the fully formed brain.

Testosterone appears to protect people against eating disorders, providing further evidence that biological factors – and not just social influences – are linked to anorexia and bulimia, according to new research findings at Michigan State University.

Schizophrenia emerges from an altered pattern of brain development, and researchers continue to search for the genes that cause the brain to develop along a path that ultimately leads to schizophrenia.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a powerful noninvasive tool for studying brain activity in both humans and experimental animals. Most fMRI studies are carried out on adults, but this technique also has great potential for studying early brain development.

A gene linked to pediatric brain tumors is an essential driver of early brain development, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found.

Researchers hoping to better understand the development of the infant brain have long been stymied by a formidable obstacle: babies just don't want to sit still for brain scans.