We have mapped high confidence eQTL operating in the human fetal brain. Although a large proportion of these continue to operate in adulthood, their activity at this timepoint and enrichment among risk variants for certain neuropsychiatric disorders suggest that their influence on brain-related traits may at least start at this early stage of development. We identify several genes and individual transcripts for which expression in the fetal brain could mediate genetic risk for neuropsychiatric traits, and these might therefore warrant further neurobiological investigation. We have made the summary eQTL data available [57] so that others can explore neurodevelopmental antecedents to these and other brain-related conditions.
