An NIH-funded partnership called the PsychAD Consortium has published the largest single-cell map of the human prefrontal cortex, drawing on sequencing data from more than six million cells from nearly 1,500 people. The findings appear across eight studies, including three papers in Nature, and detail gene activity in neurons, immune cells and vascular cells in this brain region tied to planning and emotional regulation.
nature.com
· 2026-09-23
Researchers analyzed prefrontal cortex tissue from 284 neurotypical donors aged 0 to 97, drawn from the NIMH HBCC and Mount Sinai NIH Neurobiobank collections, to build a single-cell transcriptomic atlas. Donors were screened using neuropathology criteria such as CERAD and Braak scores to exclude Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and cognitive impairment, and were grouped into developmental, young, middle and late adulthood categories.
nature.com
· 2026-09-23
Researchers analyzed post-mortem human fetal brain tissue collected across periods 13 to 24 weeks post-conception, sourced from multiple US and UK tissue banks under ethical approval, to study how the prefrontal cortex becomes distinct from motor regions. They identified a self-regulating retinoic acid signaling loop active during the mid-fetal stage that appears to guide this regional specialization as the cortical plate consolidates and thalamocortical connections form.
nature.com
· 2026-09-16
Scientists at the Salk Institute and collaborators combined multiple detection techniques to identify over 4,300 previously unrecognized 'microproteins' in postmortem brain tissue from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, comparing samples from people with and without Alzheimer's disease. Dozens of these tiny proteins, each under 150 amino acids, showed altered levels in Alzheimer's patients, and the findings were published in Nature Aging on September 14.
nature.com
· 2026-09-16
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