The conference on Fetal Neural Development and Schizophrenia which was held in Washington, DC, May 31-June 1, 1988, focused on factors of possible etiological significance in fetal development. Schizophrenia researchers joined experts in brain imaging, neuropathological, and neurochemical changes in brain development and investigators of potential genetic and neurobehavioral causes of psychosis...

The importance of thyroid hormones for normal fetal development is well established. Through animal experiments (1,2) and clinical studies (3,4), thyroid hormones have been clearly found to be crucial in brain development, maturation, and normal function. The fetal thyroid begins to produce thyroid hormones at about 10 to 12 weeks of gestation. During the first trimester, thyroid hormones are s...

It is an inconvenient truth that the onset of behavior is before birth. In all the mammalian species, for example, behavior begins in utero, hidden within the mother’s body. This simple bit of biology has made it difficult to observe or to access fetuses, leaving the beginnings of behavior to the imagination or, even worse, allowing it to be forgotten or ignored. Such truncation of perspective ...

Pregnancy is a period of rapid growth and cell differentiation for both the mother and fetus. Consequently, it is a period when both are vulnerable to changes in dietary supply, especially of those nutrients that are marginal under normal circumstances. In developed countries this vulnerability applies mainly to micronutrients. Even now, Fe deficiency is a common disorder, especially in pregnan...

Sertoli cells play a significant role in regulating fetal testis compartmentalization to generate testis cords and interstitium during development. The Sertoli cell Wilms' tumor 1 (Wt1) gene, which encodes ~24 zinc finger-containing transcription factors, is known to play a crucial role in fetal testis cord assembly and maintenance. However, whether Wt1 regulates fetal testis compartmentalizati...

Epigenetic processes play a key role in orchestrating transcriptional regulation during development. The importance of DNA methylation in fetal brain development is highlighted by the dynamic expression of de novo DNA methyltransferases during the perinatal period and neurodevelopmental deficits associated with mutations in the methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MECP2) gene. However, our knowledge a...

This longitudinal study investigated neurobehavioral development in the human fetus from 24 to 36 weeks gestation. Subject (N=103) were stratified by socioeconomic class. Fetal data were collected for 50 min at three intervals, and included measures of heart rate, movement, and biobehavioral patterns. Repeated measures analysis of variance by fetal sex and maternal socioeconomic status was used...

The purpose of this brief narrative review is to highlight the role of nutrition during the gestation period. We focused on the possible effects of imbalance of some nutrients in normal course of pregnancy and embryonic development. We discussed about changes in nutritional and/or hormonal embryonic microenvironment, which represent the basis of a phenomenon known as “fetal programming”. We str...

Contents 1. Introduction 2. Gene expression for uterine proteins and nutrient transporters 2.1. Temporal and spatial changes in steroid hormone receptors in the uterus during the peri-implantation period of pregnancy 3. Pregnancy recognition 3.1. Luteotrophic versus antiluteolytic signaling for pregnancy recognition 3.2. Corpus luteum formation and regression 3.3. Pregnancy recognition signals ...