Foetal achondroplasia: Prenatal diagnosis, outcome and perspectives.

Background: Achondroplasia, due to a specific pathogenic variant in FGFR3, is the most common viable skeletal dysplasia and the diagnosis is mostly done in the prenatal period. Since 2021, the use of Vosoritide, a specific treatment for achondroplasia, validated in phase 3 placebo-controlled trials, has been recommended to significantly increase the height of children and infants. In the light of these new therapeutic prospects, a complete understanding of the pathophysiology of skeletal damages occurring from foetal life is required.

An exceptional anomaly of the coronary venous drainage: anatomic description.

Background: Anomalies of the coronary sinus are rare in the general population but are more frequent in patients with congenital heart defects. Whatever the cardiac anatomy, the coronary sinus is invariably located in the left atrioventricular sulcus, inferior to the wall of the morphologically left atrium.

Methods: A complete morphological examination of a fetal cardiac specimen of the M3C collection, according to segmental analysis, was performed by two observers.

Synaptic rearrangement of NMDA receptors controls memory engram formation and malleability in the cortex.

Initially hippocampal dependent, memory representations rely on a broadly distributed cortical network as they mature over time. How these cortical engrams acquire stability during systems-level memory consolidation without compromising their dynamic nature remains unclear. We identified a highly responsive "consolidation switch" in the synaptic composition of -methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs), which dictates the progressive embedding and persistence of enduring memories in the rat cortex.

A cell fate decision map reveals abundant direct neurogenesis bypassing intermediate progenitors in the human developing neocortex.

The human neocortex has undergone strong evolutionary expansion, largely due to an increased progenitor population, the basal radial glial cells. These cells are responsible for the production of a diversity of cell types, but the successive cell fate decisions taken by individual progenitors remain unknown. Here we developed a semi-automated live/fixed correlative imaging method to map basal radial glial cell division modes in early fetal tissue and cerebral organoids.

Neuronal activity drives IGF2 expression from pericytes to form long-term memory.

Investigations of memory mechanisms have been, thus far, neuron centric, despite the brain comprising diverse cell types. Using rats and mice, we assessed the cell-type-specific contribution of hippocampal insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2), a polypeptide regulated by learning and required for long-term memory formation. The highest level of hippocampal IGF2 was detected in pericytes, the multi-functional mural cells of the microvessels that regulate blood flow, vessel formation, the blood-brain barrier, and immune cell entry into the central nervous system.