Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Category
Developmental neuroscience
Summary
The development of the nervous system, or neural development (neurodevelopment), refers to the processes that generate, shape, and reshape the nervous system of animals, from the earliest stages of embryonic development to adulthood. The field of neural development draws on both neuroscience and developmental biology to describe and provide insight into the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which complex nervous systems develop, from nematodes and fruit flies to mammals.
Defects in neural development can lead to malformations such as holoprosencephaly, and a wide variety of neurological disorders including limb paresis and paralysis, balance and vision disorders, and seizures, and in humans other disorders such as Rett syndrome, Down syndrome and intellectual disability.
The vertebrate central nervous system (CNS) is derived from the ectoderm—the outermost germ layer of the embryo. A part of the dorsal ectoderm becomes specified to neural ectoderm – neuroectoderm that forms the neural plate along the dorsal side of the embryo. This is a part of the early patterning of the embryo (including the invertebrate embryo) that also establishes an anterior-posterior axis. The neural plate is the source of the majority of neurons and glial cells of the CNS. The neural groove forms along the long axis of the neural plate, and the neural plate folds to give rise to the neural tube. When the tube is closed at both ends it is filled with embryonic cerebrospinal fluid. As the embryo develops, the anterior part of the neural tube expands and forms three primary brain vesicles, which become the forebrain (prosencephalon), midbrain (mesencephalon), and hindbrain (rhombencephalon). These simple, early vesicles enlarge and further divide into the telencephalon (future cerebral cortex and basal ganglia), diencephalon (future thalamus and hypothalamus), mesencephalon (future colliculi), metencephalon (future pons and cerebellum), and myelencephalon (future medulla).
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.