{"id":224454,"date":"2025-11-04T01:04:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T07:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/small-brain-region-linked-to-schizophrenia-risk-through-unique-gene-changes"},"modified":"2025-11-04T01:04:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T07:04:04","slug":"small-brain-region-linked-to-schizophrenia-risk-through-unique-gene-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/small-brain-region-linked-to-schizophrenia-risk-through-unique-gene-changes","title":{"rendered":"Small brain region linked to schizophrenia risk through unique gene changes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/small-brain-region-linked-to-schizophrenia-risk-through-unique-gene-changes2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>New research <a href=\"https:\/\/psychiatryonline.org\/doi\/10.1176\/appi.ajp.20240776\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the <i>American Journal of Psychiatry<\/i> provides new molecular insights into the role of the habenula, a pea-sized brain region that helps regulate motivation and mood, in contributing to the risk of schizophrenia. A team of researchers at Lieber Institute for Brain Development and Johns Hopkins found that many schizophrenia-related molecular changes appear to be specific to this region, suggesting the habenula could be a potential target for future treatments.<\/p>\n<p>Schizophrenia is a heritable disorder, and a combination of multiple genetic variants contributes to it. This study sought to understand how molecular changes in the habenula region of the brain contribute to the development of <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/schizophrenia\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">schizophrenia<\/a>. The authors note that they focused on the habenula because of its \u201cemerging role in <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/psychiatric+disorders\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">psychiatric disorders<\/a> and functional influence on neurotransmitter systems impacted in schizophrenia.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The study team, led by Ege A. Yalcinbas, Ph.D., used cutting-edge molecular techniques to analyze postmortem human brains, resulting in the creation of the first cell-by-cell and within-cell gene expression map of the human habenula (Hb). They then compared <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/brain+tissue\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">brain tissue<\/a> from 35 individuals with schizophrenia and 33 nonpsychiatric donors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New research published in the American Journal of Psychiatry provides new molecular insights into the role of the habenula, a pea-sized brain region that helps regulate motivation and mood, in contributing to the risk of schizophrenia. A team of researchers at Lieber Institute for Brain Development and Johns Hopkins found that many schizophrenia-related molecular changes [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}