Immune and Environmental Regulation of Human Brain Development

What happens to a baby’s brain when the mother’s immune system is activated during pregnancy?

Increasing evidence links maternal inflammation to conditions like autism and schizophrenia, but how this actually alters human brain development is still unclear. 

In this talk, I present a new human brain model, “cerebroids” 3D ex-vivo culture of human fetal tissue that preserves key features of early cortical development. Using this system, we find that proinflammatory cytokine IL-17A can dramatically reshape the developing brain. 

It causes the cortex to grow thicker, fold too early, and produce neurons at an accelerated pace. We further show that these changes are driven by inflammation-related signaling inside neural stem cells and by alterations in the brain’s structural environment. 

Encouragingly, blocking this inflammatory pathway can reverse many of these effects. These findings offer a clearer picture of how maternal inflammation may influence brain development and point to potential strategies for reducing risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.