Neurodesarrollo y patogenia de las enfermedades mentales: la vía de señal mediada por reelina

Psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia or autism may be caused by alterations during cerebral development. Over the past few years, our understanding of brain development has changed. Nowadays, cerebral development is known to be a slow process, which ranges from the neural tube formation stage to adolescence and which can be strongly influenced by several environmental factors. Recently, much progress has been made in knowledge of the molecules controlling cerebral development. Among these molecules, notable is reelin, which activates an intracellular signaling pathway that acts both during cortical development and in synaptic plasticity during adulthood. Surprisingly, reelin expression is decreased in the brains of schizophrenic and autistic individuals. Although the decrease in reelin expression does not simplify the enigma surrounding the pathogenesis of these disorders, this finding has interesting implications for psychiatry. At present, the new understanding of the role of reelin in cerebral development is creating a new paradigm for the pathogenesis of some psychiatric diseases, reducing the gap between biological hypotheses and clinical intuition.