Fetal Armor: How the Placenta Shapes Brain Development
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Tools These surgical micro-burrs are used in everything from dentistry to neurosurgery. Each tip is highly specialized, made of high-quality stainless steel or titanium, and many of them have a diamond crust... Norm Barker
Smoker's Lung Long-time smokers run the risk of developing everything from bronchitis and lung cancer to strokes and heart disease as well as emphysema (pictured). The light spots are regions where light shines through the lung whereas the black regions reveal carbon accumulations... Norm Barker
Cirrhosis of the Liver The liver is the only human organ that can regenerate itself. It's also the largest organ in the body. But even this big, complex structure is susceptible to degradation—specifically from cirrhosis... Norm Barker
Gallstones
This might look like a nice rock collection, but these stones didn't come from the ground. They're gallstones, little crystalline deposits that form within the gallbladder... Norm Barker
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Kidney Glomeruli Wrapped like balls of yarn—these glomeruli fill our kidneys, helping filter our blood. The kidney does everything from regulating salt balance to removing waste to secreting hormones to keep our fluid levels stable... Norm Barker
Striated Muscle Every time you jump, kick or run for the bus, you're using three different kinds of muscle: smooth, striated and cardiac. Striated muscle (pictured) is what powers voluntary movement, like running, and is made up of little proteins called actin and myosin... Norm Barker
Agar Petri Dishes These colorful plates are full of bacteria and fungi cultured by microbiologists to study disease. The plates contain things like antibiotics, nutrients and dyes that help researchers isolate what agents promote or stunt the organisms' growth—and what might kill the microbes... Norm Barker
Paget's Disease This image is a photo-micrograph of bone from a patient with Paget's disease. Normal bones go through something called turnover—old bone is removed and replaced by new bone, much like skin... Norm Barker
The placenta is unique among organs—critical to human life yet fleeting. In its short time of duty, it serves as a vital protective barrier to the fetus. The organ’s blood vessels—which resemble tree roots in this image by Norman Barker, associate professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine—also deliver essential oxygen and nutrients from the mother to her developing baby. Still, the placenta has been vastly underappreciated. Scientists are taking a closer look and finding that it is much more than a simple conduit: it actively protects the fetus and shapes neurological development.
In a study published last summer, British researchers showed that when a mother mouse is deprived of food, the placenta takes over, breaking down its own tissue to nourish the fetal brain. Scientists at the University of Southern California’s Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute (ZNI) and their colleagues, meanwhile, upended decades of biological dogma when they reported that it is the placenta—not the mother—that provides the hormone serotonin to the fetus’s forebrain early in development. Because hormones play an essential role in brain wiring, even before they function as neurotransmitters in the brain, placental abnormalities could directly influence the risk of developing depression, anxiety and even autism. As a result, “we have to pay much closer attention to the health and welfare of the placenta,” says Pat Levitt, director of the ZNI and the study’s co-author.
Research into the placenta’s influence on the developing brain is so new it has yet to be named. Anna Penn, a developmental neurobiologist and neonatologist at Stanford University, has dubbed it “neuroplacentology.” Penn herself is studying the impact of placental hormones on fetal brain development after the 20th week of gestation. Her goal: to pinpoint how premature babies are affected by the loss of those hormones at delivery and, ultimately, to figure out a way to compensate for the deficit. The old thinking about the placenta is changing, Penn says, but there is still much to learn.
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