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 from the PsychAD consortium describe training single-nucleus transcriptomic imputation models (snTIMs) using single-nucleus RNA sequencing data from more than 6 million nuclei drawn from brain tissue of 1,494 donors. The work involved dividing donors into ancestry groups, harmonizing genotype data across multiple sequencing and array platforms, and building ancestry-specific reference panels to align training and target cohorts, including data from the Million Veteran Program.
nature.com
· 2026-09-23
GoKawiil