@SilverPhinx - An Article For You To Consider.

[Arturo]

I'm having a hard time reading this and it's late. But I'm thinking there is something fishy about the words being used like "Schizophrenia cortex" in this article. I don't know how much you know about this kind of stuff but I know you are in the neurology field so could you maybe look through this and tell me if it's legit?

So far what I know about the article is that someone posted it and said "revolutionary study finds root cause of schizophrenia"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-017-0054-x

And then they posted this one after.
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleHtml/2009/IB/b902617g

[xSilverPhinx]

Neuroscience, not neurology, there is a difference. I'll read through the paper more carefully tonight but after a quick scan I can explain they basically analysed the role of a gene responsible for coordinating early body development (fgfr1) in brain organoids (little brains cultivated in a dish that are similar to the real thing, in this case, that undergo the same developmental stages). In the early stages, stem cells and immature neurons migrate to one of 6 layers. Here's a simplified pic of the layers found in mammals:



This migration is disrupted in schizophrenia, especially in the prefrontal cortex, which can explain why this disorder "appears" during late adolescence or early adulthood as the prefrontal cortex is still developing at those stages.

The article you posted is recent, but the fact that there are genes controlling cell migration is nothing new. It's known to occur in autism as well, with the difference that in classic autism these genes are expressed earlier than in schizophrenia. What is new is the role of the fgfr1 gene, which regulates other developmental genes and has been implicated in schizophrenia, as that paper explores.

In the paper, "schizophrenia cortex" is what they call the little brains in which the genes were upregulated or downregulated, to imitate what happens in schizophrenia. It's a model. All models have their limitations but unfortunately I don't know much about cultivated little brains with cortices which imitate schizophrenic cortices to say with certainty whether it's legit. It seems to be to me, though.     

[Arturo]

Thank you xSilverPhinx! You truly are the neuroscientist I need but do not deserve



So what I'm getting is that the stem cells and immature neurons migration to one of the six layers is slowed down by some sort of disruption caused by the fgfr1 gene. Am I correct?

And the method they did this with was by moving the stem cells and immature neurons up and down the layers by mimicking the function of fgfr1 gene? I have not read the whole paper either because I was tired. But what I did read was up until I couldn't understand like the schizophrenia cortex and the part where the start talking about genes. So the schizophrenia cortex is sort of like the laymen's term for the brain's they used in the model.