In the current era of specialized high-risk obstetrics and neonatal intensive care units, many newborns born extremely prematurely or term newborns with complex brain injuries survive the neonatal period. However, morbidity from early brain injury is substantial, with enormous impact on the lives of children and their families. This monograph provides a broad overview of perinatal brain development and injury, from conception to birth, with a focus on disorders that may arise from genetic and/or environmental insults at each developmental stage.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Origin of the Central Nervous System: The Neural Tube (3-4 Weeks Gestation)
Patterning of the Neural Tube: A Blueprint for the CNS
Neural Proliferation and Migration (3 Months Gestation Into Postnatal Period)
Organization of Neuronal Circuits and Synaptogenesis (5 Months Gestation-Postnatal Years)
Gliogenesis and Myelination (5-Month Childhood)
Developmental Brain Injury: Before, During, and After Birth
Conclusion
References
Author Biographies
About the Author(s)
Anna Penn, Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine
Anna Penn is a neonatologist and developmental neurobiologist at Stanford University School of Medicine. She received her MD and PhD from Stanford University, was a pediatric resident at UCSF, and then returned to Stanford for fellowship training. She is an NIH-funded investigator, holding a 5 year NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, as well as a recipient of multiple foundation grants. In her translational research, she draws from the many areas in which she has been trained – neuroscience, developmental biology, physiology, signal transduction, and neonatology – to develop novel models that reveal the impact of hormones on fetal brain development and damage. Her laboratory is investigating key steroid and peptide hormones that shape the developing brain in fetal and neonatal life, including an array of placental hormones and hormones that generate sex differences in the brain’s response to damage.
Juliet Knowles, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine
Juliet Knowles is currently a pediatric resident and future pediatric neurology trainee at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. She graduated from Stanford in 2011 with an MD and PhD in Neuroscience. Her doctoral research, performed in the laboratory of Frank Longo, focused on the role of the p75 neurotrophin receptor in Alzheimer’s disease. She was awarded a 2009 Alzheimer’s Association Award for Young Scientists for her work.
