Studies of the developing human brain are essential for elucidating the details of human brain formation, function, and evolutionary differences, and for understanding developmental mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism39,40 and schizophrenia19. The atlas of the mid-gestational human brain described here, part of the BrainSpan Atlas of the Developing Human Brain, builds on digital molecular brain atlasing efforts in mouse20,22,24 and adult human23 by providing transcriptome resources on prenatal specimens typically inaccessible for research. Several recent studies have assayed a limited set of brain structures1,3–5 and layers2 from prenatal human brain. In contrast, the current project aimed for anatomical comprehensiveness at a fine nuclear/laminar level, albeit with a small number of specimens. This degree of specificity necessitated using available methods for small sample amplification and DNA microarrays (the same platform recently used for adult human23), but newer techniques may soon allow moving to the resolution of single cells using RNA sequencing for complete transcriptome coverage55.
