About this Research Topic
The early postnatal period represents a critical time window for individuals’ neurodevelopment, during which programmed trajectories are highly sensitive to external influences. Indeed, early life events, interacting with genetic susceptibility, may imprint a wide range of neurobiological processes (progenitors' proliferation, neuronal and glial differentiation, cell migration, synaptic formation and pruning, excitation/inhibition balance establishment, circuitry connectivity), influencing proper and timely brain development, and long-lastingly shaping structural and functional responses to future environmental or pharmacological challenges.
The early life period has thus gathered much attention in relation to different mental diseases, such as neurodevelopmental (e.g. Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and psychiatric (e.g. Schizophrenia, Substance-Related and Depressive Disorders) disorders, complex pathologies for which, as a general rule, the earliest the therapy is started, either psychological or pharmacological, the best improvements are achieved. Clinical trials for early life pharmacological interventions have been recently approved for selected neurodevelopmental pathologies, raising hopes that in the near future more conditions could be treated at infancy, with beneficial effects lasting several years or maybe for the rest of the patient’s life. It is therefore extremely important to gather knowledge on the contribution of genetic and environmental components and their reciprocal interaction to early neurodevelopment.
With this Research Topic, we aim to unravel which systems or brain circuits at early stages of neurodevelopment determine resilience or susceptibility to psychopathological disorders in adulthood, and to establish if the manipulation of such systems/circuits can impact pathology-related symptoms and/or molecular fingerprints later in life. Original Research
articles and Reviews from the clinical and preclinical fields are welcome. Contributions from intersecting disciplines will offer a valuable asset to design more appropriate targeted treatments for mental and neurodevelopmental disorders, which will hopefully ameliorate multiple disease-related symptoms, by acting on specific developmental axes according to the age and the stage of pathology.
The early life period has thus gathered much attention in relation to different mental diseases, such as neurodevelopmental (e.g. Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and psychiatric (e.g. Schizophrenia, Substance-Related and Depressive Disorders) disorders, complex pathologies for which, as a general rule, the earliest the therapy is started, either psychological or pharmacological, the best improvements are achieved. Clinical trials for early life pharmacological interventions have been recently approved for selected neurodevelopmental pathologies, raising hopes that in the near future more conditions could be treated at infancy, with beneficial effects lasting several years or maybe for the rest of the patient’s life. It is therefore extremely important to gather knowledge on the contribution of genetic and environmental components and their reciprocal interaction to early neurodevelopment.
With this Research Topic, we aim to unravel which systems or brain circuits at early stages of neurodevelopment determine resilience or susceptibility to psychopathological disorders in adulthood, and to establish if the manipulation of such systems/circuits can impact pathology-related symptoms and/or molecular fingerprints later in life. Original Research
articles and Reviews from the clinical and preclinical fields are welcome. Contributions from intersecting disciplines will offer a valuable asset to design more appropriate targeted treatments for mental and neurodevelopmental disorders, which will hopefully ameliorate multiple disease-related symptoms, by acting on specific developmental axes according to the age and the stage of pathology.
Keywords: Neurodevelopment, Early Life Events, Long-Term Effects, Critical Windows, Mental Diseases
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