January 12, 2023
Keio University School of Medicine
The Jikei University School of Medicine
Kota Oshima, a sixth-year student at the Keio University School of Medicine, has clarified the previously unknown process by which a region in the brain called the "claustrum" is formed. This research was conducted together with Professor Kenichiro Kubo of the Department of Anatomy at The Jikei University School of Medicine (who was an associate professor at the Department of Anatomy, Keio University School of Medicine at the start of the research), Professor Kazunori Nakajima, and others from the Department of Anatomy, Keio University School of Medicine.
The claustrum is an important brain region located deep within the brain and is thought to "govern consciousness," but many of its functions and characteristics remain unexplained. Until now, it was not known how the claustrum is formed during the brain's developmental process.
In this study, the researchers visualized the neurons that make up the claustrum in mice and investigated how these cells migrate and are positioned at their final destination after they are born. As a result, they found that the claustrum's neurons perform a characteristic migration: after passing their final destination once, they reverse their direction of movement and travel back along the same path to reach their final destination. Since this phenomenon of neurons completely reversing their direction of migration has not been previously reported, it was named "reversed migration."
In recent years, attention has been drawn to the possibility that abnormalities in the brain's formation process can cause conditions such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder. The findings from this research are expected to contribute to the understanding of the pathophysiology of such disorders.
The results of this research were published on January 12, 2023 (JST), in the neuroscience journal The Journal of Neuroscience .
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