The Ingredients of Healthy Brain and Child Development

This article by Pat Levitt and Kathie L. Eagleson explains critical developmental stages in early childhood and adolescent brain development. Levitt and Eagleson start by dispelling certain misconceptions about early brain development and then examining the interaction between biological events, social and emotional development, and the role played by early childhood experiences in healthy brain development. Finally, the article discusses the importance of intervention programs on healthy brain development and positive child, adolescent, and adult outcomes

A new synaptic player leading to autism risk: Met receptor tyrosine kinase

The validity for assigning disorder risk to an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) candidate gene comes from convergent genetic, clinical, and developmental neurobiology data. Here, we review these lines of evidence from multiple human genetic studies, and non-human primate and mouse experiments that support the conclusion that the MET receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) functions to influence synapse development in circuits relevant to certain core behavioral domains of ASD. There is association of both common functional alleles and rare copy number variants that impact levels of MET expression in the human cortex. The timing of Met expression is linked to axon terminal outgrowth and synaptogenesis in the developing rodent and primate forebrain, and both in vitro and in vivo studies implicate this RTK in dendritic branching, spine maturation, and excitatory connectivity in the neocortex. This impact can occur in a cell-nonautonomous fashion, emphasizing the unique role that Met plays in specific circuits relevant to ASD

Evidence of cell-nonautonomous changes in dendrite and dendritic spine morphology in the met-signaling-deficient mouse forebrain

Human genetic findings and murine neuroanatomical expression mapping have intersected to implicate Met receptor tyrosine kinase signaling in the development of forebrain circuits controlling social and emotional behaviors that are atypical in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). To clarify roles for Met signaling during forebrain circuit development in vivo, we generated mutant mice (Emx1(Cre)/Met(fx/fx)) with an Emx1-Cre-driven deletion of signaling-competent Met in dorsal pallially-derived forebrain neurons. Morphometric analyses of Lucifer Yellow-injected pyramidal neurons in postnatal day 40 anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) revealed no statistically significant changes in total dendritic length, but a selective reduction in apical arbor length distal to the soma in Emx1(Cre)/Met(fx/fx) neurons relative to wild type, consistent with a decrease in the total tissue volume sampled by individual arbors in the cortex. The effects on dendritic structure appear to be circuit-selective, as basal arbor length was increased in Emx1(Cre)/Met(fx/fx) layer 2/3 neurons. Spine number was not altered on Emx1(Cre)/Met(fx/fx) pyramidal cell populations studied, but spine head volume was significantly increased (~20%). Cell-nonautonomous, circuit-level influences of Met signaling on dendritic development were confirmed by studies of medium spiny neurons (MSN), which do not express Met, but receive Met-expressing corticostriatal afferents during development. Emx1(Cre)/Met(fx/fx) MSN exhibited robust increases in total arbor length (~20%). Like in the neocortex, average spine head volume was also increased (~12%). These data demonstrate that a developmental loss of presynaptic Met receptor signaling can affect postsynaptic morphogenesis and suggest a mechanism whereby attenuated Met signaling could disrupt both local and long-range connectivity within circuits relevant to ASD