Brain specimens were donated through the Offices of the Chief Medical Examiners of the District of Columbia and of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Northern District to the NIMH Brain Tissue Collection at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, according to NIH Institutional Review Board guidelines (Protocol #90-M-0142). Audiotaped informed consent was obtained from legal next-of-kin on every case. Details of the donation process are described elsewhere44,45. Additional specimens, including the 35 second-trimester fetal brain tissue samples, were obtained via a Material Transfer Agreement with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Brain and Tissue Bank. All postnatal non-psychiatric control donors (N=300) were free from psychiatric and/or neurologic diagnoses and substance abuse according to DSM-IV. Every control donor had toxicology screening to exclude for acute drug and alcohol intoxication/use at time of death, and all fetal tissue was also screened for possible in utero drug exposure.
