Genetic Causes of Microcephaly and Neuronal Development

Microcephaly can be developmental resulting from abnormalities of proper development or degenerative with normal development and subsequent loss of cells. Microcephaly vera (true microcephaly), sometimes called primary microcephaly, is a group of autosomal recessive diseases of brain development that results in intellectual disability but not other neurological abnormalities. These patients were thought to have no significant brain malformations other than a small brain, but now it is clear that the phenotypes are not completely uniform, and that there is a continuum between patients that have microcephaly with normal gyral pattern, and microcephaly associated with other malformation Other forms of microcephalies that are very consistently associated with abnormal brain structure, for instance microlissencephaly (small, smooth brain), are interpreted as reflecting a gene’s requirement for both producing the proper number of neurons and subsequent stages of neuronal development. To understand the causes of microcephaly, one must understand the basic processes of brain growth and neuronal proliferation, where many advances have been made in the field over the past two decades.

Thasso had in the past already an article on the role of Zika-Virus in the development of microcephaly.

See here a sequence on the many aspects and causes of microcephaly:

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