{"id":356303,"date":"2026-03-31T04:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/356303\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:50:07","slug":"cortical-evolution-zbtb18-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/356303\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortical evolution, ZBTB18, and more"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brain evolution: Molecular and cellular regulatory components that support neuronal communication across the layers of the cerebral cortex distinguish mammalian brains from non-mammalian ones, a new <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-026-10226-y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">study<\/a> details. The investigators focused on the many types of excitatory projection neurons and their genes\u2014and specifically zeroed in on the transcription factor ZBTB18, which is implicated in autism and intellectual disability. Deletion of ZBTB18 in mouse excitatory projection neurons decreased molecular diversity and connectivity within the brain, reminiscent of older evolutionary brain structures. The authors surmise that although the complexity in the mammalian brain has advantages (and is highly conserved), it may also \u201crender them more susceptible to various neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brain evolution: Molecular and cellular regulatory components that support neuronal communication across the layers of the cerebral cortex&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-356303","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}