Abstract
Magnetic resonance imaging, histological, and gene analysis approaches in living and
nonliving human fetuses and in prematurely born neonates have provided insight into
the staged processes of prenatal brain development. Increased understanding of micro-
and macroscale brain network development before birth has spurred interest in understanding
the relevance of prenatal brain development to common neurological diseases. Questions
abound as to the sensitivity of the intrauterine brain to environmental programming,
to windows of plasticity, and to the prenatal origin of disorders of childhood that
involve disruptions in large-scale network connectivity. Much of the available literature
on human prenatal neural development comes from cross-sectional or case studies that
are not able to resolve the longitudinal consequences of individual variation in brain
development before birth. This review will 1) detail specific methodologies for studying
the human prenatal brain, 2) summarize large-scale human prenatal neural network development,
integrating findings from across a variety of experimental approaches, 3) explore
the plasticity of the early developing brain as well as potential sex differences
in prenatal susceptibility, and 4) evaluate opportunities to link specific prenatal
brain developmental processes to the forms of aberrant neural connectivity that underlie
common neurological disorders of childhood.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 18, 2020
Accepted:
February 5,
2020
Received in revised form:
January 5,
2020
Received:
July 24,
2019
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Society of Biological Psychiatry.
